An artificial intelligence healthcare company claims its software offers a more accurate detection of prostate cancer compared to traditional methods employed by doctors.
Avenda Health conducted a study involving ten physicians who evaluated 50 different prostate cancer cases. The findings indicated that Avenda’s Unfold AI software achieved an accuracy rate of 84.7%, while the manual assessments by physicians ranged from 67.2% to 75.9%.
This study, conducted in collaboration with UCLA Health and published in the Journal of Urology, also highlighted that AI-assisted cancer contouring yielded predictions regarding tumor size that were 45 times more accurate and consistent than evaluations 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 doctors’ diagnoses, leading to a greater consensus among them.
Typically, physicians rely on MRI scans to ascertain tumor size. However, some tumors remain “MRI-invisible,” as explained by Dr. Wayne Brisbane, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He emphasized that AI plays a crucial role in identifying what MRIs might miss.
Brisbane remarked that the integration of AI into cancer treatment could foster more effective and personalized patient care, resulting in treatments that are intricately tailored to individual needs and more effective in combating the illness. He stated that AI can surpass human capabilities in this context.
Dr. Shyam Natarajan, CEO of Avenda Health, expressed that it is empowering for physicians to witness this innovation being validated through research and acknowledged by the American Medical Association.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and 1 in 44 men will succumb to the disease. This year, it is projected that there will be 299,010 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States, with 35,250 deaths resulting from the disease.