An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims that its software is able to detect the extent of prostate cancer more accurately than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study in collaboration with UCLA Health, which was published in the Journal of Urology. The research involved ten doctors assessing 50 different prostate cancer cases. The results showed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while the accuracy of the physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Additionally, the study found that AI-assisted cancer contouring predictions on tumor size were 45 times more accurate and consistent compared to traditional methods without AI involvement.
Shyam Natarajan, a UCLA assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering and the senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them.
Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, highlighted the limitations of MRI scans when it comes to certain “MRI-invisible” tumors, emphasizing the AI’s role in overcoming these challenges. He stated that leveraging AI in cancer treatment could result in more effective and personalized patient care.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Natarajan, expressed that the validation of such innovations through research is empowering for physicians, especially in light of recognition from the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. this year, with 35,250 deaths attributed to the illness.