Nebraska Native, CEO Dr. Randall Jones, leads the industry with world's first non-invasive wearable PROCURETM (Prostate/Pelvic) MRI Coil.
The realm of prostate cancer is not easy to navigate. Ask anyone who has been diagnosed or is the friend or family member of someone who has been diagnosed. According to the National Cancer Institute, prostate cancer is the most common cancer (1 of 6 men) inflicting men in the United States, after skin cancer. It is the second leading cause of death from cancer in men.
With limited basic diagnosis and treatment procedures that are still deemed "controversial" by many in the medical world, Dr. Jones knew that he and his company had to take action and find a viable diagnostic alternative. All too often, men with elevated PSA will get a "blind" biopsy and are given a clean bill of health even though such biopsies are reported (in various peer reviewed scientific literature) to yield between 50 and 90% false negatives – meaning that the man did have cancer and it went undetected. After a cancer is left to grow for too long, then options are very few in terms of treatment – these are complete removal of the prostate (prostatectomy) or thermal ablation of the entire organ.
"The bottom line is that all we've had to work with up until now are invasive procedures that leave men incontinent, impotent, or both," Jones says. "I've heard doctors compare obtaining non-image guided "blind" biopsies to shooting arrows in the dark, which seems inexcusable in the realm of 21st century medicine. MRI is completely changing that paradigm. When I began to fully understand the implications and lack of options that patients have, I knew that I had to innovate a product that could greatly reduce the number of unwarranted invasive biopsies as well as provide a reliable and affordable means of early detection using MRI."
The PROCURETM Coil was born from Jones's evaluation of the current MRI tools available, non-dedicated antennae (coils) and endo-rectal coils that produced inadequate image quality or great reluctance or refusal of use respectively. The latter coil, as the name implies, is a broom handle size inflatable antennae that is inserted into the rectum in order to obtain diagnostic images of the prostate. Jones's PROCURETM is a dedicated, diaper-like MRI coil which positions multiple antennae elements as close as possible to the target anatomies (the prostate and reproductive organs) regardless of patient size. The coil also allows for biopsy should a radiologist deem that a detected lesion warrants laboratory validation. It has achieved global success, and has received praise from world-renowned prostate MRI specialists such as Dr.Jelle Barentsz, Professor of Radiology at the Radboud Prostate MR-Reference Center in Nijmegen Netherlands.
Jones, a native Nebraskan, was recently awarded his 11th patent for the PROCURETM Coil. He founded ScanMed in 2006 and has since developed other world-leading MRI coil products such as the flexible Blanket Coil, Head/Spine Arrays, and his robust line of Legacy MRI coils. ScanMed is also an industry-leader in MRI coil repair and refurbishment, manufacturing, design, and engineering. The end-to-end facility boasts an onsite diagnostic GE MRI scanner as well as three onsite 3D printers for plastic part production.