An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can identify the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health published a study last month involving ten doctors, each of whom evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved a cancer detection accuracy of 84.7%, significantly higher than the 67.2% to 75.9% accuracy rates of the physicians using manual diagnosis methods.
This study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that AI assistance in cancer contouring led to size predictions that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to those made without AI support.
According to Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the use of AI has improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ diagnoses, resulting in greater agreement among medical professionals when AI is used.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to determine tumor size; however, some tumors may not be visible in MRI scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, noted that AI can help identify these “MRI-invisible” tumors.
Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could enhance personalized patient care, leading to more effective treatments tailored to individual needs. He underscored AI’s potential to surpass human diagnostic abilities.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed enthusiasm about the validation of this innovation through research, which has received recognition from the American Medical Association.
In the United States, approximately one in eight men faces a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with one in 44 men succumbing to the disease, as reported by the American Cancer Society. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the US this year, with 35,250 resulting in fatalities.