Artificial Neural Network for Breast Cancer Diagnosis Takes Top Prize at Google Science Fair

Brittany Wenger, a 17-year-old from Lakewood Ranch, FL, took home the grand prize in this year’s Google Science Fair for her “Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer.”

Her project has shown a 99.1% success rate in identifying malignant tumors and could eventually achieve perfection, according to Wenger’s research. It uses a custom artificial neural network that weights malignancy heavily negative to analyze the results of minimally invasive fine needle aspirates.

Because the program she created learns by example, it will only get as more samples are analyzed. It’s also cloud-based, so physicians around the world could use it.  

—Jamie Hartford is the associate editor of MD+DI. Follow her on Twitter @readMED.