An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional doctor assessments.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten physicians who each evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases. The results indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy level of 84.7% in cancer detection. In contrast, the accuracy rates for the physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This research, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that incorporating AI for cancer contouring significantly improved predictions of cancer size, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to evaluations without AI assistance.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance enhanced both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them.
Traditionally, doctors rely on MRIs to determine tumor size, but some tumors can be “MRI-invisible,” as explained by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can bridge the gaps where MRIs are ineffective.
Brisbane added that utilizing AI in cancer treatment could result in more effective and personalized patient care, allowing for treatments that are better suited to individual needs and more effective in combating the disease, stating that AI has the potential to “go beyond human ability.”
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is empowering for physicians to see such innovations validated through studies and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, around 1 in 8 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives, and 1 in 44 men is expected to die from the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases this year in the U.S., with an estimated 35,250 fatalities resulting from the disease.