An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can identify the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than physicians.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten doctors, each assessing 50 different prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to physicians, who ranged from 67.2% to 75.9% in manual assessments.
This research, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that when using AI for cancer contouring, predictions of tumor size were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, stated that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among physicians using this technology.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to determine tumor size; however, some tumors may not be visible on these scans, as noted by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can provide insights where MRIs may fall short.
Brisbane remarked that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could facilitate more effective and personalized patient care by tailoring treatments to individual needs, ultimately improving outcomes in battling the disease. He highlighted that AI has the capability to “go beyond human ability.”
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed the significance of the innovation being validated through studies and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 men succumbing to the illness. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the US this year, with an estimated 35,250 deaths from the disease.