A test with Niramai currently costs about $20, which Manjunath expects to “fall further as volumes pick up.” By comparison, a mammogram in India typically costs between $20 and $50. The technology is currently employed in 11 hospitals and diagnostic centers across five cities: Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), where the company is based, as well as Pune, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Dehradun.

For clinical screenings, the effectiveness of a given device is typically determined by two measures: sensitivity and specificity. “Sensitivity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those with a disease. “Specificity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those without a disease. So far, the company has reported results from two clinical studies, with the most recent showing that Niramai’s rates of sensitivity and specificity are both above 90 percent, significantly better than mammography on both measures. In addition, Niramai was found to be 18 percent more sensitive than its human counterpart at analyzing thermal images for potential malignancy.

Unfortunately, a screening tool like Niramai wasn’t an option for Godfrey 10 years ago. She continues to have yearly checkups but says she gets “so scared” when she has to do a mammogram, because she lost part of her right breast following a lumpectomy. Although she has yet to try Niramai, Godfrey thinks it sounds “very good [because] it’s noninvasive and you’re not getting any pain.”

Others are less convinced. “There aren’t a lot of data to support the use of thermal diagnostics as being better than standard screening today,” says Gilberto Lopes, who studies how cancer control can be improved in low- and middle-income countries at the University of Miami. So far, the two Niramai studies conducted have involved some 300 Indian patients in total, although the company says more trials are currently underway.

Another screening tool getting developed is MammoAlert, which will be launched in Gujarat state early next year. “It’s a little lab in a box … a portable system which comes to you,” says Sanjeev Saxena, the founder and CEO of POC Medical Systems, the California-based company that developed the test.

MammoAlert works by performing an immunoassay on a blood sample—just a finger prick is needed, similar to what diabetics do to test their sugar levels. The sample is analyzed for four protein markers known to be associated with breast cancer. “Then we add an algorithm on top of that, which has been trained using deep machine learning and AI, to analyze what is the probability that somebody has breast cancer,” Saxena says. The results are available in less than 30 minutes and are relayed via a smartphone app to the test operator, physician, and patient.

MammoAlert is a test that “can be done in whatever rural community, slums, etcetera, at a very low cost and early,” says Saxena. It has a specificity and sensitivity of more than 85 percent compared with rates closer to 70 percent for mammography in a country like India, he adds, and costs less than $5 a test. While the specific location of the tumor still has to be confirmed via mammography or other methods, the technology has the potential to speed detection of breast cancer in millions of women around the world.