A healthcare technology firm claims that its software can more accurately gauge the extent of prostate cancer than medical professionals.
Avenda Health conducted a study last month with ten doctors who evaluated a total of 50 prostate cancer cases. The findings revealed that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved a cancer detection accuracy of 84.7%, whereas the doctors’ manual assessments ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This research, carried out in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, found that employing AI for cancer contouring resulted in size predictions that were 45 times more accurate and reliable compared to traditional methods.
According to Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the study’s senior author, the introduction of AI assistance enhanced both the accuracy and consistency of doctors’ assessments. This led to greater agreement among physicians when utilizing AI.
Typically, doctors rely on MRIs to determine tumor size, but some tumors are “MRI-invisible,” noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. AI technology offers a solution where MRIs may not be effective.
Dr. Brisbane emphasized that the integration of AI in cancer management could foster more efficient and personalized therapies for patients, aligning treatments more closely with individual needs and improving outcomes. He insisted that AI has the potential to surpass human capabilities in this field.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed pride in seeing such innovations backed by research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association (AMA).
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the U.S. will face a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with 1 in 44 succumbing to the illness. The current estimates predict 299,010 new prostate cancer cases and 35,250 associated deaths this year in the United States.