Avenda's Unfold AI Enters the OR with Surgery Mode
A 3D prostate cancer mapping platform moves from pre-op consultation to live surgical guidance—with accuracy figures that dwarf standard MRI.
By The Robotics Desk
For years, surgeons performing robotic prostatectomies have relied on MRI to judge how far a tumor has spread before making nerve-sparing calls. Avenda Health thinks that standard is no longer good enough. The Culver City, Calif.-based company has launched Surgery Mode, a new suite of intraoperative features for its Unfold AI platform that brings personalized 3D cancer mapping directly into the operating room. [1]
The numbers behind the move are hard to dismiss. Unfold AI predicts cancer spread into nearby anatomy with 92% accuracy, compared with 52% using MRI alone—a gap wide enough to change the surgical plan entirely. Separate research shows the platform improves physician identification of tumor extent, increasing sensitivity from 37% to 97%. [1]
Avenda Health claims Unfold AI is the only platform implementing multimodal AI to analyze a patient's MRI, biopsy, pathology, and PSA together, producing a personalized 3D map of the cancer's extent. [1] Surgery Mode extends that map into the procedure itself: surgeons can now access enlarged 3D views, adjust the cancer estimation map to match the camera angle on the surgical console, review underlying MRI slices mid-procedure, and pull up capsule risk scores from within a dedicated surgical view. [1]
The most operationally precise addition is the Aligned Capsule Risk Score mapping. The overlay now automatically flips its left/right visual orientation to mirror the surgical camera view, giving surgeons immediate, color-coded risk feedback by quadrant to guide nerve-sparing decisions in real time. [1] That matters because, as Avenda Health has noted, these nerve-sparing decisions relate directly to protecting patient quality of life during complex procedures.
What makes this transition notable is not just the technical upgrade but what it implies about the arc of AI-assisted medicine. The pattern—decision support first, then live procedural guidance—is becoming a template. Tools that once lived in the clinic are migrating into the operating room, closing the gap between planning and execution.
The launch builds on peer-reviewed research predicting that Unfold AI could cut positive surgical margins in half, substantially reducing cancer recurrence. [1] In that study, the system outperformed MRI and other modalities in assessing whether cancer had spread beyond the prostate. While Unfold AI has served as a decision-support tool during preoperative consultations, the latest expansion gives surgeons an enhanced version of these maps during prostate procedures. [1]
Surgery Mode also addresses the administrative friction that slows surgical workflows. Improved patient organization and updated case status labels let users search for cases in progress, add new patients, and filter by status to see where each case stands at a glance. New built-in tools let staff verify insurance approvals and confirm administrative steps are complete before 3D map generation begins. Care teams can now add and view patient notes directly from the patient list and update the assigned physician on a patient report. [1]
Avenda Health says the expanded features extend Unfold AI's reach across the full prostate cancer care pathway—active surveillance, focal therapy, surgical interventions, and radiotherapy. [1] Founded in 2017, the company has framed its mission as building a more personalized future for prostate cancer care, and Surgery Mode is the clearest sign yet of how far that ambition has traveled from the consultation room to the console.
The real test will come in outcomes data gathered post-launch. But if the peer-reviewed accuracy figures hold in wider surgical practice, Unfold AI's Surgery Mode could redefine what surgeons expect to see—and know—before they make their first incision.