An AI healthcare company claims that its software can more accurately detect the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month involving ten doctors who assessed 50 different cases of prostate cancer. The company’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the physicians’ manual assessments ranged between 67.2% and 75.9%.
This study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that incorporating AI for cancer contouring improved predictions of tumor size by a factor of 45 compared to manual methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and senior author of the study, stated that the integration of AI assistance made physicians both more accurate and consistent, resulting in higher agreement among doctors when employing AI tools.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to determine tumor size; 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 provides solutions where MRIs fall short.
Dr. Brisbane expressed that AI’s application in cancer treatment could revolutionize patient care by offering more effective and personalized treatment options that cater to individual needs and enhance success rates against the disease. He emphasized that AI has the potential to “go beyond human ability.”
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, highlighted the importance of validating such innovations through studies and receiving acknowledgment from the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetimes, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new prostate cancer cases in the U.S. this year, resulting in 35,250 deaths.