A healthcare technology company claims its AI software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten physicians, each evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases. Their AI tool, known as Unfold AI, achieved a detection accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring provided predictions of cancer size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent.
Shyam Natarajan, assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and senior author of the study, noted that the integration of AI improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ evaluations, leading to greater agreement in their assessments.
Doctors commonly utilize MRIs to gauge tumor sizes, but some tumors may remain “MRI-invisible,” as explained by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He stated that AI fills the gaps where MRIs fall short.
Brisbane further emphasized that incorporating AI into cancer treatment could enhance personalized care, making treatments more effective and aligned with patients’ specific needs. He remarked that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities in cancer detection.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, highlighted the significance of these innovations being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, in the United States, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. It is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the US this year, with 35,250 expected fatalities.