THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

According to an article published recently in Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, a “better” form of MRI may be able to improve the accuracy of prostate imaging over current techniques. The problem is that it is not entirely clear from the available information whether this new technique has been compared to high-quality, multi-parametric, diffusion-weighted MRI techniques or to some lesser standard.

The abstract of the original new paper by Rakow-Penner et al. is available on line, as are a media release from the University of California, San Diego, Health System and an article on the Medical News Today web site.

All three articles state clearly that the new form of MRI, referred to by the authors as “restriction spectrum imaging-MRI” or RSI-MRI appears to offer “measurably better results” in the detecting and identification of prostate cancer than “standard, contrast-enhanced MRI”. However, what is a lot less clear is what the authors mean by the term “standard, contrast-enhanced MRI”.

It is already clear that multi-parametric, diffusion-weighted forms of MRI (especially when carried out with a 3 T MRI machine) is a good deal better at the detection and identification of prostate cancer tumors than older “standard” forms of MRI. And this has already been extensively discussed here and in the medical and scientific literature.

Your sitemaster does not pretend to be an expert in all sorts of different things, one of which is MRI technology. It may take us a little while to work out for readers whether RSI-MRI is really any more promising than the multi-parametric, diffusion-weighted forms of MRI that are already and increasingly available in many institutions (albeit not enough, yet).

Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Risk | Tagged: imaging, magnetic, MRI, resonance, RSI-MRI |