A healthcare company specializing in artificial intelligence has claimed that its software can more accurately detect the extent of prostate cancer than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten doctors who each evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases. Their AI software, known as Unfold AI, achieved a cancer detection accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the accuracy rates for doctors assessing the cases manually ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The study, which was carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also discovered that using AI for cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor size being 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to methods without AI.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to higher agreement among physicians when using AI tools.
Traditionally, doctors rely on MRI scans to determine tumor sizes; however, some tumors are not visible on MRIs. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, explained that AI can help in situations where MRIs are inadequate. He emphasized that the integration of 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.
Dr. Natarajan, the CEO of Avenda Health, expressed his enthusiasm for the validation of such innovations through studies and recognition by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that in 2023, there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States, with 35,250 deaths attributed to the disease.