A California-based AI healthcare firm has claimed that its software can identify the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than physicians.
Avenda Health recently published a study involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 separate cases of prostate cancer. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, whereas doctors who relied on manual detection reported accuracy rates ranging from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, conducted alongside UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, also demonstrated that AI-assisted cancer contouring predictions 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 study’s senior author, the implementation of AI assistance enhanced both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to a higher level of agreement among physicians.
Typically, doctors utilize MRI scans to assess tumor size; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI technology can provide crucial insights where MRI scans are inadequate.
Brisbane stated that leveraging AI in cancer treatment could result in more personalized and effective patient care, with therapeutic approaches that are better adapted to individual cases and more successful in combating the illness. He remarked that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, highlighted the significance of this innovation being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the United States this year, with an estimated 35,250 deaths resulting from the disease.