An AI healthcare company claims that its software provides a more accurate detection of prostate cancer than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study which involved ten physicians evaluating 50 different prostate cancer cases each. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while doctors using manual methods ranged between 67.2% and 75.9%.
This research, in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, indicated that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor sizes being 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to non-AI methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that AI assistance made physicians both more accurate and consistent, leading to a higher agreement among doctors when utilizing the technology.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to assess the size of tumors, but some can be “MRI-invisible,” according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. He emphasized that AI can fill the gaps where MRIs are ineffective.
Dr. Brisbane added that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could enable more effective and personalized patient care, allowing treatments to be better suited to individual needs and improving success rates against the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed that the validation of such innovations through studies, acknowledged by the American Medical Association, is empowering for physicians.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men 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 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States, with an estimated 35,250 deaths attributed to the illness.