An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can assess the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health recently conducted a study involving ten doctors who reviewed 50 prostate cancer cases each. The research revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the accuracy for physicians manually evaluating the cases ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, indicated that when using AI to aid in cancer contouring, the precision of cancer size predictions was 45 times greater and more consistent compared to traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the integration of AI support increased both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to higher levels of agreement among them.
Doctors often rely on MRI scans to determine tumor size, but some tumors can be “MRI-invisible,” as explained by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI proves beneficial in scenarios where MRIs fall short.
Brisbane noted that the application of AI in cancer treatment could pave the way for more effective and personalized patient care, tailoring treatments to individual needs and enhancing their ability to combat the disease. He highlighted that AI has the potential to exceed human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to see such innovations being validated through studies and recognized by the American Medical Association.
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 illness. It is predicted that in the US, there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases this year, with 35,250 fatalities attributed to the disease.