An AI healthcare company claims its software can more accurately assess prostate cancer than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study in collaboration with UCLA Health, involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 cases of prostate cancer each. The findings revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software identified cancer with an accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the accuracy of the physicians’ manual evaluations ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The research, published in the Journal of Urology, indicated that incorporating AI for cancer contouring dramatically improved the precision of cancer size predictions, making them 45 times more accurate compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that AI assistance enhanced both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ evaluations, leading to greater agreement among them.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size, but some tumors are difficult to detect on these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA, stated that AI technology fills in the gaps where MRIs may fall short. He emphasized that utilizing AI in cancer treatment could result in more effective and personalized patient care, allowing for tailor-made treatments that better combat the disease. Brisbane highlighted AI’s capabilities as extending beyond human limitations.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed optimism about the validation of such innovations through research and their recognition by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. It is anticipated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, resulting in 35,250 deaths.