How to Perform and Interpret Prostate Mri

Initially, the role of MRI for assessment of prostate cancer was limited to staging patients with biopsy proven disease. However, along with the expansion of treatment options for prostate cancer and advances in MR technology (software, hardware, and 3T), clinical applications of prostate MRI now include detection, localization, active surveillance, and image guidance for biopsy and surgery. Traditional prostate MRI, which was based exclusively on morphologic imaging with standard T1-weighted and T2-weighted sequences, had limited capability to delineate prostate cancer foci and to distinguish between malignant and benign tissues. More recently, multiparametric MR imaging, which incorporates functional and physiologic MR imaging techniques such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) imaging, and MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI), has been shown to improve accuracy.