An artificial intelligence healthcare company has announced that its software can identify the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month involving ten physicians, each evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, whereas the participating doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The collaborative study, which included UCLA Health and was published in the Journal of Urology, demonstrated that AI-assisted cancer contouring predictions were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, remarked that the use of AI assistance resulted in higher accuracy and consistency among doctors, leading to better consensus in their assessments.
Doctors commonly rely on MRI scans to determine tumor size; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can bridge the gaps where MRIs fall short.
Dr. Brisbane added that the integration of AI in cancer care has the potential to enhance personalized treatment approaches, allowing therapies to be more effectively tailored to individual patient needs. He stated that AI could surpass human capabilities.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed encouragement in seeing such innovations validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the illness.
This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S., leading to an estimated 35,250 deaths from the disease.