An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer than medical professionals.
Avenda Health recently conducted a study involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 distinct prostate cancer cases. Their AI software, known as Unfold AI, achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to the manual detection rates of physicians, which ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This research, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that AI significantly improves the precision of cancer size predictions, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance led to greater accuracy and consistency among doctors, who showed increased agreement when utilizing this technology.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to evaluate 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, explained that AI can help identify cases where MRIs do not provide clear information.
Dr. Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could facilitate more effective and personalized patient care, tailoring treatments to individual needs and improving the chances of combating the disease. He highlighted that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, the CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to see such innovative advancements validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will face a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and about 1 in 44 men will die from the disease. In the United States, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases this year, with an estimated 35,250 fatalities resulting from the illness.