A healthcare AI company 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, each evaluating 50 prostate cancer cases. The results indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7% in detecting cancer, whereas the accuracy of the physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This research, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in predictions of tumor size that were 45 times more accurate than those made without AI support.
Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA and the senior author of the study, noted that AI assistance improved both the accuracy and consistency of the doctors’ assessments, leading to greater agreement among them when utilizing AI tools.
Doctors often rely on MRI scans to measure tumor size; however, some tumors are not visible through MRI, according to Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI fills the gaps where MRIs fall short.
Dr. Brisbane stated that the implementation of AI in cancer care could enhance personalized treatment, making it more effective and better suited to the individual needs of patients. He highlighted the capability of AI to surpass human potential.
Avenda Health’s CEO, Dr. Shyam Natarajan, expressed that it is encouraging for physicians to see such innovations validated through studies and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
In the United States, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives, and about 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. This year, it is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer, with 35,250 fatalities attributed to the disease.