An artificial intelligence healthcare company has announced that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer than human doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month involving ten physicians who each evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved a cancer detection accuracy of 84.7%, while the doctors’ manual detections ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, which was carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that using AI for cancer contouring resulted in predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more precise and consistent compared to traditional methods that did not involve AI.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, stated that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among physicians.
Doctors often rely on MRIs to determine tumor sizes; however, 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, noted that AI fills the gaps where MRIs may fail.
“Integrating AI into cancer treatment could enhance personalized care for patients, leading to interventions that are better suited to their specific needs and more effective in combating the disease,” Brisbane added, asserting that AI can surpass human capabilities.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed confidence in the validation of such innovations through research and recognition by the American Medical Association.
In the United States, approximately 1 in 8 men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men are expected to succumb to the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S., leading to 35,250 deaths from the illness.