An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software is capable of detecting prostate cancer with greater accuracy than human doctors.
Avenda Health recently conducted a study involving ten doctors, each evaluating 50 different cases of prostate cancer. The results showed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the physicians’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that when using AI to assist in cancer contouring, predictions regarding cancer size were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to assessments made without AI.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that the use of AI assistance made doctors not only more accurate but also more consistent in their assessments, leading to greater agreement among physicians when utilizing AI.
Typically, doctors rely on MRI scans to evaluate tumor sizes; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” as pointed out by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can fill in gaps where MRI technology may fall short.
Brisbane stated that incorporating AI into cancer treatment could result in more effective and personalized patient care, with treatment plans better suited to individual needs and more successful in combating the disease. He remarked that AI could “go beyond human ability.”
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is “empowering for physicians” to see such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, around 1 in 8 men in the United States will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and approximately 1 in 44 men are expected to die from the illness. It is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, with a projected 35,250 fatalities attributed to the disease.