Avenda Health, an artificial intelligence healthcare company, claims that its software can more accurately detect the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
A recent study, which included ten physicians evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases each, revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved a detection accuracy of 84.7%. In contrast, the doctors’ manual detection rates ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the research highlighted that incorporating AI for cancer contouring enhanced the predictions of tumor size, making them 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that using AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them.
Typically, physicians rely on MRI scans to gauge tumor dimensions, but Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, pointed out that some tumors are difficult to detect through MRI. He explained that AI proves beneficial in these cases where MRIs may fall short.
Brisbane emphasized that implementing AI in cancer treatment could pave the way for more effective and personalized patient care, allowing treatments to be better suited to individual circumstances and enhancing the efficacy of disease management. He stated that AI has the potential to “go beyond human ability.”
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Natarajan expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to witness this innovation being 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 ultimately succumb to the illness. The organization estimates that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 fatalities attributed to the disease.