An AI healthcare company claims its software can more accurately detect the scope of prostate cancer compared to doctors.
Avenda Health recently released a study involving ten doctors who assessed 50 different prostate cancer cases. The study found that Avenda’s Unfold AI software detected cancer with an accuracy rate of 84.7%, in contrast to the 67.2% to 75.9% accuracy rate of manual assessments by the physicians.
The study, which was in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also revealed that AI-assisted cancer contouring resulted in 45 times more accurate and consistent predictions of cancer size than traditional methods.
“We observed that the use of AI assistance made doctors both more accurate and more consistent,” stated Shyam Natarajan, an assistant adjunct professor of urology, surgery, and bioengineering at UCLA, who is also the senior author of the study.
Prostate cancer diagnosis often relies on MRIs to determine tumor size; however, some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” noted Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. AI can help detect these otherwise hidden tumors.
“The inclusion of AI in cancer treatment can lead to more effective and personalized patient care, with treatments that are better suited to individual needs and more successful in combating the disease,” Brisbane added. He asserts that AI capabilities can surpass human abilities.
Avenda Health CEO Dr. Shyam Natarajan emphasized the importance of such innovations being validated through studies and recognized by authoritative organizations like the AMA.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men in the US will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will die from the disease. It is estimated that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer this year in the US, with 35,250 resulting in death.