New Tech for Detecting Prostate Cancer

A group of team from UK has discovered a new technology that may help to identify cancer area in the prostate gland and it allows better biopsies and disease detection. 

Usually MRI scans prior to a biopsy test. MRI targeted biopsies are found to have increased detection rates from 50% to around 90% over the last five years.

Now researchers found a new technology deployed through the Smart Target system which creates 3D model of the prostate and cancer from MRI scans of each patient by leveraging image processing and machine learning algorithms. This new system helps surgeons to identify cancers that were missed with existing visual detection techniques.

In their study researchers performed two biopsies in 129 people with prostate cancer using Smart Target system and visual MRI scan review. In the combination of two methods they identified 93 clinically significant prostate cancers while each of them detected 80 and missed 13 that the other technique picked up.

Dr Dean Barratt who is the researchers in UCL said, “we developed the Smart Target system to equip surgeons with vital information about the size, shape, and location of prostate tumours during a biopsy.

In future they hopes that new techniques can decrease the number of biopsies as well as unnecessary surgeries.