[MR imaging of prostate cancer]

Accurate diagnosis and staging of prostate cancer (PC) is developing into an important health care issue in light of the high incidence of PC and the improvements in stage-adapted therapy. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on the current role of MR imaging and MR spectroscopy in the diagnosis and staging of PC.

Pertinent literature was searched and evaluated to collect information on current clinical indications, study techniques, diagnostic value, and limitations of magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy.

Major indications for MR imaging of patients with suspected PC are to define tumor location before biopsy when clinical or TRUS findings are inconclusive, and to provide accurate staging of histologically proven PC to ascertain effective therapy. Current MR imaging techniques for the evaluation of PC include multiplanar high-resolution T2-weighted FSE and T1-weighted SE sequences using combined endorectal and phased-array coils. Using these techniques, the reported accuracy of MR imaging for the diagnosis of extracapsular tumor extension ranges between 82 and 88% with sensitivities between 80 and 95%, and specificities between 82 and 93%. Typical MR findings of PC in different stages of disease, as well as diagnostic problems, such as chronic prostatitis, biopsy-related hemorrhage and therapy-related changes of prostatic tissue are discussed. In addition, the current perspectives and limitations of MR spectroscopy in PC are summarized.

Current MR imaging techniques provide important diagnostic information in the pretherapeutic workup of PC including a high staging accuracy, and is superior to TRUS.