A healthcare technology firm has announced that its software can more accurately assess the extent of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods used by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month involving ten physicians who evaluated fifty different cases of prostate cancer. The company’s Unfold AI software demonstrated an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, while doctors’ manual assessments ranged between 67.2% and 75.9%.
The research, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that AI assistance significantly improved predictions of cancer size, achieving 45 times greater accuracy and consistency compared to standard practices without AI.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that the integration of AI assistance led to enhanced agreement among doctors when making diagnoses.
Doctors typically rely on MRIs to determine tumor sizes; however, some tumors are not visible through MRI scans. Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at UCLA, explained that AI can fill this gap effectively.
He emphasized that utilizing AI in cancer treatment could pave the way for more personalized and effective patient care, with treatments better suited to individual needs and more successful in combating the disease. Brisbane remarked that AI has the potential to exceed human capabilities in this regard.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed enthusiasm for the validation of this innovative technology through research and acknowledgment from the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 succumbing to the disease. This year, it is estimated that 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer will be identified in the U.S., with 35,250 deaths resulting from the disease.