An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Recently, a study conducted by Avenda Health, which involved ten physicians evaluating 50 different prostate cancer cases each, found that the company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy of 84.7% in detecting cancer. In contrast, the doctors’ manual assessments varied between 67.2% and 75.9% accuracy.
This study, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that utilizing AI for cancer contouring significantly improved the accuracy of cancer size predictions, making them 45 times more precise when AI assistance was employed.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that the integration of AI not only boosted doctors’ accuracy but also enhanced consistency among their assessments.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to gauge tumor sizes, but some tumors remain “MRI-invisible.” Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, emphasized that AI can address these limitations where MRIs fall short.
According to Dr. Brisbane, the incorporation of AI in cancer treatment could pave the way for more personalized and effective patient care, with therapies more closely aligned to individual patient requirements and better success rates in combating the illness.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to see such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
Statistics from the American Cancer Society indicate that approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 ultimately succumbing to the disease. This year, it is projected there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S., resulting in 35,250 deaths.