An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The findings indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to the manual assessments by physicians, which ranged from 67.2% to 75.9% accuracy.
This study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also highlighted that utilizing AI for cancer contouring resulted in predictions of cancer size being 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to assessments made without AI assistance.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor in urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, remarked that AI assistance improved the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them when using AI tools.
Traditionally, doctors rely on MRI scans to assess tumor size; however, some tumors can be “MRI-invisible,” according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can provide valuable insights where MRIs fall short.
Dr. Brisbane also noted that implementing AI in cancer treatment could facilitate more effective and personalized patient care, leading to tailored treatments that enhance the chances of successfully combating the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is inspiring for physicians to witness such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, while 1 in 44 will lose their battle with the disease. It is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the US this year, resulting in 35,250 fatalities.