An AI healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately determine the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional diagnostic methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health recently published a study featuring ten doctors who each evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the manual assessments by physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study also highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent than traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the integration of AI assistance not only improved the accuracy of diagnoses but also led to greater agreement among physicians.
Doctors typically rely on MRI scans to gauge tumor sizes; however, some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” as noted by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. He explained that AI provides support where MRIs may fail.
Brisbane stated, “The use of AI in cancer treatment could pave the way for more effective and personalized care, with treatments tailored to individual needs, thus enhancing the likelihood of successful outcomes.” He emphasized that AI can exceed human capabilities in certain areas.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging for healthcare professionals to witness such innovations being validated through research and endorsed by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 men succumbing to the disease. This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the US, leading to an estimated 35,250 deaths from the illness.