A healthcare technology company claims its AI software can more accurately detect prostate cancer than human doctors.
Avenda Health recently published a study involving ten physicians who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to the manual assessments by the doctors, which ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study revealed that utilizing AI for cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor size being 45 times more accurate than traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and the study’s senior author, explained that the integration of AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. AI technology addresses this limitation.
Brisbane emphasized that the incorporation of AI into cancer treatment could enable more effective and personalized care for patients, allowing for treatment plans tailored to individual needs and improving the chances of successfully combating the disease. He noted that AI has the potential to outperform human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to witness such innovations being validated by studies and recognized by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 succumbing to the illness. This year alone, an estimated 299,010 new prostate cancer cases are expected in the U.S., with 35,250 resulting in fatalities.