Upright MRI for Prostate Cancer Screening

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer among men in the United States, with over 180,000 new cases diagnosed in 2016. This commonality implies that set standards need to be set and devise effective tools to screen and diagnose prostate cancer. Today, prostate specific antigen (PSA) test is the most widely adopted screening method for PCa. Since its introduction in 1979, it has helped in earlier diagnosis of PCa and has had a marked shift on the stage at which PCa is identified. PSA, although popular as a screening tool, has several shortcomings. It is organ-specific rather than cancer-specific, which means that its values can be elevated even for non-malignant conditions . Indeed, PSA based screening has reported positive predictive value as low as 30% (PSA cutoff >4.0 ng/dL) for detecting prostate cancer and an over diagnosis rate of 50%, which leads to unnecessary biopsies and aggressive treatments of men with clinically indolent (insignificant) disease.

Current diagnostic pathway of prostate cancer requires men with elevated PSA and abnormal Digital Rectal exam to undergo a Trans Rectal Ultra Sound (TRUS) guided biopsy. TRUS is a blind-systematic biopsy, which randomly samples prostate tissue. This can lead to missing or under-diagnosing clinically significant cancer and over-diagnosing clinically insignificant disease. TRUS biopsy is itself associated with morbidity, mainly in the form of hematuria, hematospermia, pain, urinary retention and sometimes can cause life-threatening sepsis.

Many of the PSA screened detected prostate cancers detected on TRUS are clinically insignificant and even if left untreated have little to no clinical impact on an individual's remaining life. Overtreatment resulting from over diagnosis often leads to side effects like erectile dysfunction (approx. 60%) from radical therapy and urinary incontinence.