Related Experiment Video For MRI
Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Use of MRI-ultrasound Fusion to Achieve Targeted Prostate Biopsy
Published on: April 9, 2019
Fusion-targeted biopsy significantly improves prostate cancer detection in biopsy-naïve men
Leandro Blas1, Masaki Shiota1, Shigehiro Tsukahara1
1Department of Urology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Objective:
The precise diagnosis of prostate cancer (PC) is crucial to avoid underdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. We aimed to compare clinically significant PC (csPC) detection between MRI/ultrasound fusion-targeted prostate (TBx) compared to systematic biopsy (SBx) in biopsy-naïve Japanese men.
Methods:
We included patients with suspect PC due to elevated PSA level or abnormal digital rectal examination, or both. csPC was defined as International Society Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade group ≥2 (csPC-A) and ISUP grade group ≥3 (csPC-B).
Results:
This study included 143 patients. Overall PC detection was 66.4% for SBx and 67.8% for MRI-TBx. MRI-TBx presented a significantly higher rate of csPC detection (csPC-A 67.1% vs. 58.7%, p = 0.04, and csPC-B 49.6% vs. 39.9%, p < 0.001) and significantly lower detection of non-csPC-A (0.6% vs. 6.7%). Importantly, MRI-TBx missed 4.9% (7/143) of csPC-A and only 0.7% (1/143) of csPC-B. On the other hand, SBx alone missed 13.3% (19/143) of csPC-A and 4.2% (6/143) of csPC-B.
Conclusion:
MRI-TBx significantly outperformed 12-cores SBx for csPC detection and decreased non-csPC detection in biopsy-naive men. Performing MRI-TBx without SBx would have missed some csPC, supporting that MRI-TBx synergizes with SBx to increase csPC detection.

