Radiologist Dr Sonal Mahalwar talks about the improvements needed in the field in India

A leading name in radiology in India, Dr Sonal Mahalwar has some shining credentials to her name. She completed her post-graduation from Homi Bhabha Institute in 2014 as a gold medallist and did her fellowship in Musculoskeletal Radiology from Harvard University Massachusetts General Hospital.

Following that, she also did super specialised work in Ganga Hospital in Tamil Nadu alongside some leading personalities from her field and today she is working with the reputed Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon. Simultaneously she is also pursuing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from IIIT, Delhi, where she is planning to start a project for helping early breast cancer detection.

Sonal is the director of a teleradiology company, by the name of Subspeciality Teleradiology Pvt Ltd, which caters to the needs of multiple diagnostic centres which do not have the support of radiologists 24X7.

Ask Sonal what does she feel are the improvements that are needed in the field of radiology in India and she shares, "Being a part of this field and also after working closely in the modalities of cancer imaging and musculoskeletal imaging, I realised that as radiologists, we are flooded with cases, so we need the tool of artificial intelligence to reduce the human error in the diagnosis. This tool is also helpful in picking up early lesions which can go unnoticed in multiple diagnostic centres situated in the periphery, which in return can save the lives of many patients if an early detection of cancer is done."
And this is what Sonal wants to work towards too. "I want to work on the tool of artificial intelligence by developing a software which can help early detection of breast cancer and unnoticed hairline fractures seen in severely osteoporotic bones. I want to raise funds and become an ambassador to increase the awareness of artificial intelligence in upcoming years," she signs off.