The Tribune

The Nuevozen Corporation, a leading provider of innovative cancer detection solutions, has announced its partnership with the Fourth Terrace Diagnostic Centre here in Nassau. The partnership’s goal is the development and installation of an artificial intelligence powered breast cancer solution.

This AI-based initiative is being developed to assist radiologists in the diagnosis and identification of women’s individual risk of developing breast cancer.

The Bahamas ranks among the top 20 countries in the world in terms of the number of women per capita with breast cancer. The breast cancer incidence rate (IR) for women in the Bahamas is increasing and 48 percent of the patients diagnosed with breast cancer are less than 50 years of age and are diagnosed at Stage III.

Three different genes influencing breast cancer have been identified in Bahamian women, making it a country with one of the highest proportion of mutations in the world. Approximately 24 percent of the women with breast cancer in the Bahamas have one of these mutations. There are also many other risks factors that are still not well understood.

Fourth Terrace Diagnostic Centre’s founder, CEO and lead radiologist, Dr C Elizabeth Darville, has been at the forefront of cancer care in Bahamas for more than 35 years. She has promoted screening from earlier ages for Bahamian women and has seen the benefit of early diagnosis for her patients.

“If Nuevozen’s AI solution can assist our radiologists in improving breast cancer diagnosis, we can improve patient outcome through early detection” said Dr Darville, “Also, if an AI solution is able to predict individual Bahamian women’s risk of developing breast cancer, we will be able to move from age-based screening to risk-based screening, and this will dramatically improve early detection and survival.”

She said they are also pleased to announce that Dr Vijay Anand Subramanian, who has been a part of their team for many years, has been appointed as the director of Fourth Terrace’s Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Department.

The diagnostic centre’s president, Stanley Darville added: “Technological advances in medicine continue to occur at almost an exponential pace and Fourth Terrace Diagnostic Centre is working closely with our local Bahamian IT firm Redstone Technologies to provide the high level of support for our data centre and the immense computing power that is needed to implement Nuevozen’s artificial intelligence solution.”

“We are extremely excited to be working with Fourth Terrace Diagnostic Centre,” said Karan Aujla, co-founder and CEO of Nuevozen.

“Current risk models are population-based and focus on lifetime or long-term risk. Many of the age based risk models don’t apply to Bahamian women due to the high incidence of genetic mutations, and available data has shown that by using the genetic information together with and the information available in the DICOM images and the patient history, we can come up with a more accurate risk assessment. I believe that by analysing patient data using AI techniques we can help healthcare providers in improving prevention and treatment of breast cancer.”