An AI healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately detect the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health published a study examining the performance of its Unfold AI software in detecting prostate cancer, which involved ten doctors evaluating 50 different cases. The AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%, whereas the manual assessments by physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the study also revealed that using AI technology for cancer contouring significantly improved predictions of tumor size, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, an adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, noted that AI assistance enhanced both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ diagnoses, resulting in a higher level of agreement among them.
Currently, doctors typically rely on MRI scans to determine tumor size. However, Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, pointed out that some tumors are not visible via MRI, and AI can help identify these cases.
Dr. Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could lead to more effective and personalized care, as treatments could be better customized to meet the individual needs of patients, ultimately improving their chances against the disease.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed his excitement regarding the validation of this innovative technology through research and recognition 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 1 in 44 will succumb to the illness. It is estimated that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the US this year, with 35,250 anticipated deaths resulting from the disease.