Value of Elastography in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis

Recently, Elastography has been introduced for prostate cancer imaging. Elastography is an imaging technique that evaluates the elasticity of the tissue. Krouskop et al. reported that cell density was greater in neoplastic tissue, which causes a change in tissue elasticity / stiffness. Ophir et al. first described the principle of this technique in 1991. To reduce the time-consuming calculations, Pesavento et al. developed a fast cross-correlation technique that is the basis for real-time Elastography. This method can be used to visualize displacements between US image-pairs of tissue under ‘compression’. As most solid tumours differ in their consistency from the deriving tissue, real-time Elastography offers a novel tool for detecting cancer. Depts of Radiology II and Urology, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria Ferdinand Frauscher Michael Mitterberger Leo Pallwein