Restriction Spectrum Imaging-MRI an Easier Way to Detect Prostate Cancer

A new kind of magnetic resonance imaging or MRI seems to be measurably superior at finding prostate cancer tumors than the present method, with respect to the outcomes of a new research. The study authors say the outcomes may also have significant implications for the therapy of prostate cancer.

Publishing  the study in the journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, a team lead by the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, explains how the new MRI method, known as restriction spectrum imaging-MRI (RSI-MRI) – provides measurably much superior results in finding prostate cancer tumors than the existing standard, contrast-enhanced MRI.

Initial author Dr. Rebecca Rakow-Penner, states that:

“This new method is a more efficient imaging method for identifying tumors. It provides a superior target for biopsies, especially for small sized tumors.”

Corresponding author David S. Karow, explains how RSI-MRI is also beneficial in surgical planning and image staging.

He states that it provides a non-invasive way to evaluate more perfectly the extent of the tumor and probably even estimate its grade. This allows physicians choose more accurately the very effective and suitable treatment.

Novel MRI method picks up water diffusion in tissue instead of blood flow

Contrast-enhanced MRI, the present standard for finding and diagnosing prostate cancer, utilizes a substance that is injected into the sufferer that the MRI scanner then picks up to focus on blood flow. The method provides a opportunity to identify tumor type and shape because of the variations in blood flow between healthy and cancer tissue, which usually needs more blood.

On the other hand, not all tumors vary properly from surrounding healthy tissue in terms of blood demand, and in these situations, they are tough to identify using contrast-enhanced MRI.

As a result of this restriction, scientists have recently been searching at a different type of MRI known as diffusion MRI that picks up the diffusion of water in tissue. Diffusion MRI is a conventional approach for brain scanning.

One more feature of tumors is that their tissue is more dense than healthy tissue, and this impacts the ease with which water can permeate it.

However, as it stands, diffusion MRI distorts the position of prostate tumors – by up to half inch or 1.2 cm because of a problem known as “magnetic field artifacts.” This amount of magnetic distortion is adequate to trigger issues for physicians, who have to know how long a tumor may expand beyond the prostate, for example, how greatly it is enmeshed with close by nerve bundles.

RSI-MRI measurably much better than contrast-enhanced MRI for discovering prostate tumors

In their publication, the authors explain outcomes of evaluating contrast-enhanced MRI and RSI-MRI in 28 sufferers with prostate cancer who experienced both types of scan before radical prostatectomy.

They consider that RSI-MRI corrects for the magnetic field distortion of diffusion MRI adequately to make it helpful and more efficient than contrast-enhanced MRI for tumor position and sizing in prostate cancer.

In one more publication, to be presented in the journal Frontiers in Oncology, the team describes how RSI-MRI may also be capable to estimate the grade of a tumor. This is because the quantity of water cancer cells can take into their nuclei varies with tumor grade.

Being capable to estimate tumor grade utilizing non-invasive imaging could spare some sufferers from aggressive prostate surgery and enable them to be supervised with scans instead.