An AI tool tested in the North-east has successfully identified tiny signs of breast cancer in 11 women which had been missed by human doctors.
The tool, called Mia, was piloted alongside NHS Grampian clinicians and analysed the mammograms of over 10,000 women.
Most of them were cancer-free, but it successfully flagged all of those with symptoms, as well as an extra 11 the doctors did not identify.
At their earliest stages, cancers can be extremely small and hard to spot.
BBC Scotland spoke to one patient, Barbara, whose cancer was flagged by Mia but had not been spotted on her scan when it was studied by the hospital radiologists.
Without the AI tool's assistance, Barbara's cancer would potentially not have been spotted until her next routine mammogram three years later. She had not experienced any noticeable symptoms.
Because it works instantly, tools like Mia also have the potential to reduce the waiting time for results from 14 days down to three, claims its developer Kheiron.
Sarah Kerruish, Chief Strategy Officer of Kheiron Medical, said it took six years to build and train Mia, which is run on cloud computing power from Microsoft, and it was trained on "millions" of mammograms from "women all over the world".
The Mia trial is just one early test, by one product in one location. The University of Aberdeen independently validated the research, but the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed.
Nevertheless, The Royal College of Radiologists believes the tech has potential. Its president, Dr Katharine Halliday, said: "These results are encouraging and help to highlight the exciting potential AI presents for diagnostics. There is no question that real-life clinical radiologists are essential and irreplaceable, but a clinical radiologist using insights from validated AI tools will increasingly be a formidable force in patient care."
Dr Julie Sharp, head of health information at Cancer Research UK said the increasing number of cancer cases diagnosed each year meant technological innovation would be "vital" to help improve NHS services and reduce pressure on its staff.
"More research will be needed to find the best ways to use this technology to improve outcomes for cancer patients," she added.