prostate-report.org

Advances in imaging of the prostate gland

The treatment and management of prostate cancer remains one of the most challenging areas in medicine today. There is no area in urology that has undergone more intensive research over the last decade than improving the detection and cure of this disease. The key to success is early detection in order to offer radical therapy before the disease has spread, and imaging is the centrepiece of this strategy.

Traditionally, the transrectal ultrasound has been the imaging modality used in the diagnosis of prostate cancer. However, it is plagued with poor accuracy in diagnosis and determining the extent of the disease spread. It is also traumatic, with the need for a number of needle punctures through the rectum into the prostate gland as well as the repeat biopsies if the cancer is not picked up. All this is distressing, as well as risky, to the patient.

There is a recent trend towards imaging with MRI as an improvement over the transrectal ultrasound. Results from using 1.5T MRI have shown that the most recent high-resolution pelvic phased-array coils already provide excellent imaging of the prostate gland, improving accuracy for cancer detection and volume estimation. This accuracy has been confirmed with actual biopsy specimens.