A healthcare technology company claims its software can identify the severity of prostate cancer more accurately than physicians.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, surpassing the accuracy of human evaluations, which varied between 67.2% and 75.9%.
The research, in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also indicated that AI-assisted cancer contouring produced predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and senior author of the study, the integration of AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to a greater level of agreement among them.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size; however, some tumors may not be visible through MRIs, as noted by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. AI technology fills the gap where MRIs may fall short.
Brisbane emphasized that the deployment of AI in cancer treatment could facilitate more effective and personalized care, allowing for treatments that are more closely tailored to individual patients, which could enhance the success of combating the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, remarked on the significance of such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will ultimately succumb to the disease. This year, it is projected that there will be around 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S., with 35,250 men expected to die from it.