Avenda Health, an AI healthcare company, claims its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors. In a recent study involving ten physicians who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each, Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%. This contrasts with the accuracy rates of the physicians, which ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring significantly enhanced the precision of cancer size predictions, making them 45 times more accurate compared to standard methods.
Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, remarked that the integration of AI assistance not only improved the accuracy but also increased consistency among doctors’ evaluations.
Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA, noted that while MRIs are commonly used to determine tumor size, some tumors remain undetectable by this method. He emphasized that AI technology can identify these challenging cases. He believes that the incorporation of AI into cancer treatment may facilitate more effective and personalized patient care, with therapies better adapted to individual patient needs.
Dr. Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed the significance of these findings, highlighting the validation of their innovation through empirical studies and recognition from the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, roughly 1 in 8 men in the US will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and about 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the US, with approximately 35,250 fatalities attributed to the illness.