Avenda Health claims that its AI software can more accurately identify the extent of prostate cancer than human doctors.
A recent study featured ten physicians evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases each, revealing that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved a cancer detection accuracy of 84.7%. In contrast, the doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
Conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, the study also demonstrated that AI-assisted cancer contouring predictions were 45 times more precise and consistent compared to traditional methods.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, noted that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ evaluations, leading to increased agreement among them.
Typically, doctors use MRIs to determine tumor size; however, some tumors can be undetectable on these scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, stated that AI fills the gap left by MRIs.
Brisbane emphasized that integrating AI into cancer treatment could enhance personalized care, tailoring treatments to better meet individual patient needs and potentially increasing treatment success rates. He remarked that AI has the capability to “go beyond human ability.”
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that the validation of this innovation through studies and recognition by the American Medical Association is empowering for healthcare providers.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will die from the disease. This year, it is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the US, with 35,250 fatalities attributed to the illness.