Study: Metabolomic imaging directs biopsy in prostate cancer

A malignancy index constructed by using magnetic resonance (MR) spectra based on prostate cancer metabolomic profiles obtained from previous intact tissue had an accuracy of 93 to 97 percent for detecting the presence of prostate cancer lesions, according to an article published in the January issue of Science Translational Medicine.

In a preliminary study, Leo L. Cheng, PhD, assistant professor of radiology and pathology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues evaluated five whole prostates removed during prostatectomy from biopsy-proven cancer patients on a 7T human whole-body MRI scanner.

“Localized, multi–cross-sectional, multivoxel MR spectra were used to construct a malignancy index based on prostate cancer metabolomic profiles obtained from previous intact tissue analyses with a 14-tesla spectrometer,” wrote Cheng.

Cheng and colleagues demonstrated that the malignancy index was linearly correlated with lesion size with an overall accuracy of 93 to 97 percent for detecting the presence of prostate cancer lesions.

“Metabolomic imaging can map cancer-specific biomolecular profile values onto anatomical structures to direct biopsy,” concluded the authors.

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