A healthcare technology company claims that its software can detect prostate cancer more accurately than physicians.
Avenda Health published a study last month involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The company’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% accuracy.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the study found that when AI assisted in cancer contouring, the accuracy and consistency of cancer size predictions improved dramatically, with AI proving to be 45 times more accurate than traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that the use of AI assistance not only increased accuracy but also led to greater consensus among doctors when making assessments.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to gauge tumor sizes; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can provide assistance in these challenging cases.
Brisbane added that incorporating AI into cancer treatment could usher in a new era of more effective and personalized patient care, with approaches tailored to meet individual needs and improve success rates against the disease. He highlighted that AI can exceed human capabilities in some instances.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed the significance of this innovation being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, about 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. It is estimated that in the U.S. there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases this year, with 35,250 deaths resulting from it.