An AI healthcare company has announced that its software can detect the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than traditional methods used by physicians.
Avenda Health’s study, conducted with ten doctors who evaluated 50 separate prostate cancer cases, revealed that its Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%. In comparison, the accuracy rates for doctors manually assessing the cancers ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Urology in collaboration with UCLA Health, also highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring provided predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent than those made without AI assistance.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology at UCLA and the study’s senior author, stated that the integration of AI tools resulted in physicians being not only more accurate but also more consistent in their assessments, leading to better agreement among doctors when utilizing AI support.
Doctors commonly rely on MRI scans to determine tumor sizes; however, some tumors are not visible on these scans, a limitation noted by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can provide critical insights in instances where MRI fails.
Dr. Brisbane expressed that the implementation of AI in cancer treatment could afford more effective and personalized patient care, aligning treatments closely with individual patient needs and enhancing the chances of successfully combating the illness. He remarked that AI capabilities can exceed human limitations.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, described the validation of such innovations by studies and recognition by the American Medical Association as empowering for doctors.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. This year alone, it is anticipated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S., with 35,250 resulting in death.