An artificial intelligence healthcare company has announced that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health published a study involving ten physicians who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The study revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the accuracy rates for doctors using manual detection ranged between 67.2% and 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the research also demonstrated that AI-assisted cancer contouring predictions concerning tumor size were 45 times more precise and consistent than those made without AI.
Shyam Natarajan, a senior author of the study and assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, noted that the incorporation of AI improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to a greater consensus among them when using AI assistance.
Traditional assessments often rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size; however, some tumors are not visible on such scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, stated that AI can provide valuable insights where MRI technology falls short.
Brisbane mentioned that utilizing AI in cancer treatment could enable more effective and personalized patient care, resulting in treatment plans that are better suited to individual needs and more effective against the disease.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed that it is empowering for physicians to witness innovation being validated through scientific studies and acknowledged 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 estimated that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 expected deaths resulting from the illness.