A healthcare technology company has announced that its AI software is capable of detecting the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than human physicians.
Avenda Health published 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, whereas the doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, revealed that the use of AI in cancer contouring led to cancer size predictions that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
“We observed that the integration of AI assistance significantly improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, resulting in better agreement among them when utilizing AI,” stated Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and the study’s senior author.
Often, doctors rely on MRIs to gauge tumor sizes, yet some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The AI technology enhances detection where MRIs fail.
“Utilizing AI in cancer treatment could provide patients with more effective and personalized care, allowing for treatments that are better suited to their specific conditions and more effective in combating the disease,” Brisbane remarked. He emphasized that AI’s capabilities can exceed human limitations.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Natarajan expressed that it is motivating for medical professionals to witness innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is estimated that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 fatalities attributable to the illness.