An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims its software can more accurately determine the extent of prostate cancer than traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study in partnership with UCLA Health that involved ten physicians who evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The results revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software identified cancer with an accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the physicians using manual detection methods achieved accuracy rates ranging from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, published in the Journal of Urology, also indicated that incorporating AI for cancer contouring increased the accuracy and consistency of cancer size predictions, with AI being 45 times more precise compared to manual assessments.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, the use of AI-assisted methodologies led to greater accuracy and consistency among doctors. They tended to have more agreement when AI was utilized.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to gauge tumor sizes; however, some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI plays a crucial role in situations where MRIs fall short.
Dr. Brisbane remarked that the integration of AI in cancer treatment could usher in more personalized and effective care for patients, allowing for treatments that are better suited to their specific needs and more efficient in combating the disease. He stated that AI can “exceed human capability.”
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan expressed that it is “empowering for physicians” to see such innovations validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
In the United States, approximately one in eight men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis during their lives, and one in 44 men will succumb to the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S., resulting in 35,250 deaths from the illness.