An AI healthcare company has announced that its software is capable of detecting the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study in collaboration with UCLA Health, which involved ten physicians evaluating 50 separate cases of prostate cancer. The results revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved a detection accuracy of 84.7%, while manual evaluations by physicians varied between 67.2% and 75.9%.
This study, published in the Journal of Urology, highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent when compared to non-AI methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and a senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance not only improved accuracy but also increased consistency among doctors’ assessments. This means physicians were more likely to reach a consensus when using AI tools.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to determine tumor sizes, but some tumors are difficult to detect using this imaging technique, referred to as “MRI-invisible.” Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA, emphasized that AI can fill this gap where MRIs may fall short.
Brisbane remarked that incorporating AI into cancer treatment could significantly enhance personalized care, allowing treatments to be more effectively tailored to meet individual patient needs and improving outcomes in the battle against the disease. He expressed confidence in AI’s capability to surpass human limitations.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan emphasized the significance of seeing such innovations 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, and 1 in 44 men will ultimately succumb to the illness. The society estimates that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 expected to result in fatalities.