An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can identify the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study that involved ten doctors who evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases each. Their Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, whereas the physicians’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The research, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring provided predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them.
Doctors typically use MRIs to assess tumor size; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible.” Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, noted that AI offers solutions when MRIs fall short.
Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could promote more effective and personalized patient care, allowing for treatments that are more aligned with individual needs and more successful in combating the disease. He highlighted that AI has the potential to “go beyond human ability.”
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed pride in seeing such innovations validated through studies and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will face a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. In the United States, there are projected to be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer this year, with an estimated 35,250 fatalities.