A healthcare technology company claims its AI software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten physicians who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The results indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to the manual assessments by doctors, which ranged from 67.2% to 75.9% accuracy.
The research, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, highlighted that AI assistance significantly improved the precision of cancer size predictions, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to assessments without AI.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that the incorporation of AI assistance not only enhanced the accuracy of doctors but also fostered greater consensus among them.
While doctors often rely on MRI scans to evaluate tumor size, some tumors remain undetectable on these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, emphasized that AI can rectify these limitations where MRIs fall short.
He further stated that leveraging AI in cancer treatment could facilitate more effective and personalized patient care, tailoring treatments to meet individual needs and improving success rates against the disease. Dr. Brisbane remarked that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging to see such innovations validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, around 1 in 8 men in the United States will face a prostate cancer diagnosis during their lives, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. In 2023, it is projected that there will be approximately 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed in the US, resulting in an estimated 35,250 fatalities.