An AI healthcare company claims its software can more accurately identify the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health published a study last month featuring ten doctors who evaluated 50 distinct prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, significantly outperforming physicians, whose manual detection accuracy ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study revealed that when AI assisted in cancer contouring, predictions of cancer size became 45 times more accurate and consistent.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, and the study’s senior author, remarked that AI assistance not only improved doctors’ accuracy but also enhanced consistency, leading to greater agreement among physicians using the technology.
While doctors commonly rely on MRIs to determine tumor size, some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” as noted by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI can fill the gaps where MRIs fail.
Brisbane indicated that integrating AI into cancer treatment could result in more personalized and effective patient care, with therapies that are better aligned with individual needs and more successful in combating the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging for doctors to see such innovations validated through research and recognized 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 men will succumb to the disease. This year, it is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S., with 35,250 deaths attributed to the illness.