An AI healthcare company has reported that its software can detect the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than human doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study featuring ten physicians, each evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%, significantly outperforming doctors, whose accuracy ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This research, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, indicated that AI-assisted cancer contouring provided size predictions that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor in urology at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the integration of AI made doctors more precise and led to increased consistency in their assessments.
While doctors typically rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size, some tumors elude detection by MRI, noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. He emphasized that AI serves a critical role in addressing these limitations.
Brisbane believes that the application of AI in cancer treatment can lead to more tailored and effective patient care, significantly enhancing treatment success rates. He remarked that AI has the potential to exceed human capabilities.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to witness such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
Statistics from the American Cancer Society reveal that approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 succumbing to the illness. This year, it is anticipated that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S., resulting in 35,250 fatalities.