An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately determine the extent of prostate cancer than medical professionals.
Avenda Health published a study last month involving ten doctors who evaluated 50 different cases of prostate cancer. The company’s Unfold AI software identified cancer with an accuracy of 84.7%, whereas the manual assessments by physicians ranged between 67.2% and 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and featured in the Journal of Urology, the study also showed that AI-assisted cancer contouring predicted tumor size with 45 times greater accuracy and consistency compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, stated that the incorporation of AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater consensus among them.
Doctors typically rely on MRI scans to evaluate tumor size; however, Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, noted that some tumors cannot be detected by MRI. He emphasized that AI fills in the gaps where MRI technology is insufficient.
Brisbane added that utilizing AI in cancer treatment could enhance personalized care for patients, allowing for treatments that are more effectively tailored to their specific needs and more successful in combating the illness.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to witness such innovations being validated through research and recognized by 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 men will succumb to the illness. This year in the U.S., there are an estimated 299,010 new prostate cancer cases, with 35,250 expected deaths resulting from the disease.