A healthcare technology firm claims that its software is capable of detecting the extent of prostate cancer with greater accuracy than traditional methods employed by doctors.
Avenda Health recently published a study where ten physicians evaluated 50 prostate cancer cases each. The results indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, compared to manual detection methods used by doctors, which 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 utilizing AI for cancer contouring yielded size predictions that were 45 times more precise and consistent than those made without AI assistance.
The study’s senior author, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, noted that the integration of AI helped enhance both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them when assisted by AI.
Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, pointed out that while MRIs are commonly used to gauge tumor size, some tumors remain undetectable on MRI scans. AI technology can identify these cases where traditional imaging falls short.
Overall, Dr. Brisbane stated that the inclusion of AI in cancer treatment holds the potential to foster more effective and personalized patient care, enabling treatments that are more closely aligned with individual patient requirements and ultimately more successful in combating the disease.
Dr. Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is “empowering for physicians” to witness such innovations gaining validation through research and recognition from the American Medical Association.
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 succumbing to the illness. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer this year in the US, resulting in 35,250 deaths from the disease.