Could there be a future where not using AI is considered unethical? With the growing efficiency created by AI support, radiologists are able to focus on the most important aspects of their work. During this conversation, I am joined by Stefan Bunk and Christian Leibig from Vara. Tuning in, you’ll hear about the essential practice of maintaining a high standard of data quality and how AI technology is revolutionizing breast cancer detection and treatment. We discuss the relevance of German innovation and research on a global community, and the step-by-step process that Vara adopts to test and introduce AI products. You’ll also hear about Stefan and Christian’s vision for the future of Vara. Don’t miss this episode, packed with powerful insights!

Key Points:

• Introducing Stefan Bunk and Christian Leibig from Vara.
• Vara’s mission for breast cancer outcomes in line with WHO’s Global Breast Cancer Initiative.
• The role of machine learning in Vara’s technology.
• What the AI technology predicts and the software that goes into this.
• Why it is essential to maintain a high standard of data quality.
• The relationship between images from earlier exams and current procedures.
• How models are trained to manage different variations.
• The relevance of German data for global application.
• Why it is important to have strong processes around AI deployment.
• What it means to run in Shadow Mode first and why Vara chooses to do this with AI products.
• How they established the best way to integrate AI into the workflow.
• The crucial role of trust in machine learning models.
• Monitoring AI models constantly and creating the means to react quickly.
• Where Stefan and Christian see the impact of Vara in five years.
• The enduring goal of Vara: to support radiologists as they focus on the most important factors.
• Considering the possibility that not using AI will become unethical in the future.

Quotes:

“Our ambition is to find every deadly breast cancer early. Breast cancer is the most common cancer actually worldwide, one out of eight women will have it at some point in their lifetime.” —  Stefan Bunk

“At Vara, we want to empower health systems to systematically find more cancers much earlier and systematically downstage cancers.” — Stefan Bunk

“Amachine learning model can actually outperform a radiologist with a single image, but nevertheless, can still benefit from taking comparisons across images into account.” —  Christian Leibig

“When you roll out a technology such as AI, which is the technology that is hard to understand, and you cannot always predict how it behaves in certain edge cases. We believe there must be strong processes around it wherever you will deploy your AI.” — Stefan Bunk

Links:

Stefan Bunk on LinkedIn

Christian Leibig on LinkedIn

Vara

Resources for Computer Vision Teams:

LinkedIn – Connect with Heather.

Computer Vision Insights Newsletter – A biweekly newsletter to help bring the latest machine learning and computer vision research to applications in people and planetary health.

Computer Vision Strategy Session – Not sure how to advance your computer vision project? Get unstuck with a clear set of next steps. Schedule a 1 hour strategy session now to advance your project.

Computer Vision Advisory Services – Monthly advisory services to help you strategically plan your CV/ML capabilities, reduce the trial-and-error of model development, and get to market faster.