Imaging in Diagnosis and Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer: A Review

Active surveillance (AS) has become an increasingly important option for managing low-risk and select intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Although imaging, particularly multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI), has emerged in the prebiopsy pathway for the diagnosis of prostate cancer, the role of mpMRI in patient selection for AS and the necessity of prostate biopsies during AS remain poorly defined. Despite well-founded biopsy schedules, there has been substantial investigation into whether imaging may supplant the need for prostate biopsies during AS. This review aimed to summarize the contemporary role of imaging in the diagnosis and surveillance of prostate cancer.

Multiparametric MRI is the most established form of imaging in prostate cancer, with routine prebiopsy use being shown to help urologists distinguish between clinically significant and clinically insignificant disease. The visibility of these lesions on mpMRI closely correlates with their behavior, with visible disease portending a worse prognosis. Combined with other clinical data, risk calculators may better delineate patients with higher-risk disease and exclude them from undergoing AS. While current evidence suggests that mpMRI cannot replace the need for prostate biopsy during AS due to the possibility of missing higher-risk disease, the addition of prostate biomarkers may help to reduce the frequency of these biopsies. The role of prostate-specific antigen positron emission tomography/computed tomography is still emerging but has shown promising early results as an adjunct to mpMRI in initial diagnosis.

Imaging in prostate cancer helps to better select patients appropriate for AS, and future studies may strengthen the predictive capabilities of risk calculators. Multiparametric MRI has been shown to be imperative to rationalizing biopsies for patients enrolled in AS. However, heterogeneity in the evidence of mpMRI during AS has suggested that further prospective studies and randomized clinical trials, particularly in homogenizing reporting standards, may reveal a more defined role in monitoring disease progression.