An AI healthcare company has announced that its software can more accurately determine the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health published a study last month involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 different cases of prostate cancer. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the doctors’ manual evaluations yielded accuracy rates ranging from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the study revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring predicted the size of tumors with 45 times more accuracy and consistency compared to manual assessments.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the introduction of AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ evaluations, leading to increased agreement among them.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to assess tumor sizes; however, some tumors are not visible through this imaging technique. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA, emphasized that AI can aid in these cases where MRIs are less effective.
Dr. Brisbane stated that implementing AI in cancer treatment could lead to more effective and personalized care, allowing treatments to be better adapted to individual patient needs. He noted that AI could surpass human capabilities in this context.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed that the validation of their innovation through studies and acknowledgment by the American Medical Association is empowering for physicians.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and around 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that in 2023, there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States, with an estimated 35,250 fatalities resulting from the illness.