An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software is capable of detecting the scope of prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health recently published a study involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases. Their AI software, known as Unfold AI, achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, whereas doctors’ 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 highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent than those made without AI support.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance not only improved the accuracy of diagnoses but also led to greater agreement among physicians when using the tool.
Traditionally, doctors rely on MRI scans to determine tumor size; 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, stated that AI can provide insights where MRIs fall short.
Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer treatment has the potential to enhance patient care by offering more tailored and effective therapies aimed at combating the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed that it is empowering for healthcare providers to witness such innovations being validated through research and recognized 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 during their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, with an estimated 35,250 deaths resulting from the illness.