An AI healthcare company claims its software is capable of detecting the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than human doctors.
Last month, Avenda Health published a study that involved ten doctors evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases each. The study found that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%, outperforming physicians who manually assessed the cases, whose accuracy ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the research revealed that employing AI for cancer contouring significantly improved predictions regarding tumor size, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent when AI was utilized compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and the senior author of the study, stated, “The use of AI assistance made doctors both more accurate and more consistent, leading to a greater level of agreement among them.”
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to evaluate tumor size, but some tumors can be undetectable on these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, emphasized that AI fills the gap left by MRIs.
Brisbane stated, “Overall, the use of AI in cancer treatment could lead to more effective and personalized care for patients, with treatments better tailored to their individual needs and more successful in combating the disease.” He further noted that AI has the potential to “go beyond human ability.”
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is “empowering for physicians to see this kind of innovation being validated through studies and recognized by the AMA.”
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 the US, there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases this year, with an estimated 35,250 deaths resulting from the illness.