An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software is able to detect prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study 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, while the physicians’ manual assessments varied between 67.2% and 75.9%.
The study, in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also indicated that using AI for cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that the use of AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them when using AI support.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to determine tumor size, but some tumors are not visible on these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, highlighted that AI can provide valuable assistance where MRIs fall short.
Brisbane emphasized that integrating AI into cancer treatment could result in more effective and personalized patient care, with therapies that are better suited to individual needs and more successful in combating the disease. He remarked that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is empowering for doctors to witness such innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 fatalities anticipated as a result of the disease.