Breast cancer screening programs could help identify women at risk of CVD, a study in the European Heart Journal suggests.

Researchers from Emory University and the Mayo Clinic in the US have developed an AI that automatically quantifies breast arterial calcification (BAC) in mm² during routine screening mammograms.

BAC, easily visible on high-resolution mammograms, correlates with calcification in other arteries and can predict major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), the researchers say.

They validated their model on 123,762 women aged 40-79 across two cohorts, all of whom had at least one in-person follow-up after an initial mammogram.