Teen Develops Less Invasive Means to Detect Breast Cancer

PROFILENAMESBrittany WengerTITLEHighschool seniorLOCATIONLakewood Ranch, Fla.

How did you feel when you heard you had won not only your age category but also the grand prize at the July 23 awards ceremony ?
grand prize: 大賞

I was just so excited.

It was a surreal experience walking up there.
surreal: シュールな

I don't even know how I got up there.

Tell me about your project.

I taught the computer how to diagnose breast cancer so it could determine whether a breast mass is malignant or benign.

I did this because currently the least invasive form of biopsy, known as a fine-needle aspirate, is actually the least conclusive.
invasive: 侵入する、侵略的な、侵害の
biopsy: 生検、生体組織検査、バイオプシー
fine-needle: 微小針; 微細針
aspirate: 気(息)音、音、気息音字、帯気音

So a lot of doctors can't use it.

I created an artificial neural network, which is a type of program that learns based on its experiences and mistakes, so it classifies problems that are far too complex for humans to classify.

Then I fed information into the neural network from a database of fine-needle aspirates.
fine-needle aspirate: Null

Currently the network is 99.1 percent sensitive to malignancies, and I ran 7.6 million trials and proved that, as I get more data, the success rate increases and the inconclusivity rate decreases, so I think with more data it will prove to be hospital ready.

What inspired your project ?

In the seventh grade I grew fascinated by artificial intelligence, which I came across while working on a school project.
come across: …を横切る、に浮かぶ、…に(ふと)出くわす、…を見つける

I went home that night, and I bought a computer programming book and, with no experience, decided that was what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

Computer science is one area where men still outnumber women.

Why do you think that's the case ?

I think sometimes there's a stereotype around computer science, that it's just video game development, and more boys are hard-core game developers than girls.
hard-core: 徹底した、筋金入りの、極端に露骨な、そのものずばりの、治癒不可能に見える、慢性的な

But you have to realize it's our Web sites, our Google tools, it's our Facebook, and I think that you could reach girls more if you could appeal to what they're using computer science for.

But also I think we've come a long way.

More girls are getting interested in science, and I know it used to be that girls weren't encouraged, but I've never felt like I couldn't go into science, like I was being discriminated against because I was a girl.
discriminate: 区別する、識別する、分け隔てをする、差別待遇する、(…を)えこひいきする

Have you decided what career path you'd like to pursue ?

I want to be on the frontier of cancer research, finding the cures that are going to save lives and doing things with computer science that can be the technologies of the future.

I also want to be a pediatric oncologist, so I hope to intertwine my passions for research, computer science and patient care in the future.
pediatric: 小児科(学)の
oncologist: 腫瘍学者
intertwine: (…を)からみ合わせる、編み合わせる、織り込む、(…を)(…と)からみ合わせる

What are the next steps for your project ?

It will take a long time, but I hope to scale it up and bring it into hospitals.
scale up: スケールアップ、スケールアップする

I put my neural network into the cloud because the cloud is this amazing, elastic entity that allows for a million hospitals to access it tomorrow if they want and to provide feedback.
elastic entity: Null

I'm so happy to have won the Google Science Fair because it will give me a new platform, and people will take me more seriously.

COMMENT AT ScientificAmerican.

com/oct2012

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