Avenda Health has announced that its AI software can more accurately detect the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors. In a study conducted with UCLA Health, ten physicians evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The results revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
The research, published in the Journal of Urology, also highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring yielded size predictions that were 45 times more accurate and consistent than those made without AI support. Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and senior author of the study, noted that the inclusion of AI made doctors’ assessments more precise and led to greater consensus among them.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs for tumor size assessment; however, some tumors are difficult to detect through these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA emphasized that AI offers solutions where MRIs fall short. He believes that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could enhance personalized care, tailoring treatments more effectively to individual patients and improving outcomes.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed pride in the validation of such innovations through research and acknowledgment from the American Medical Association. According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and around 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. This year, it is estimated that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the US, with approximately 35,250 fatalities attributed to the disease.