Avenda Health has announced that its AI software can more accurately assess prostate cancer than traditional methods used by doctors. A study involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each found that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%. In contrast, the doctors’ accuracy ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study also revealed that when doctors utilized AI for cancer contouring, their predictions regarding cancer size were 45 times more accurate and consistent than those made without AI assistance.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and senior author of the study, noted that AI support helped doctors not only become more accurate but also more consistent in their assessments, as they reached a greater level of agreement when using AI tools.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to gauge tumor size; however, some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” according to 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 indicated that the integration of AI into cancer treatment could pave the way for more effective and personalized patient care, allowing for treatments that are better suited to individual needs and more successful in combating cancer.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, stated that it is exciting for physicians to see 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 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 projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S., with an estimated 35,250 fatalities from the disease.