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A new multiparametric MRI protocol for diagnosis of prostate cancer

University of British Columbia

In this thesis, a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) quantitative T2 mapping technique, called Luminal water imaging (LWI), has been developed and used for non-invasive detection and grading of prostatic tumours. Using this technique, we measured what we hypothesized to be the fractional amount of water content of luminal spaces in prostate, and called it Luminal Water Fraction, LWF. Based on the differences in tissue composition and fractional amount of luminal space between malignant and normal prostatic tissues and between tumors of different grades, we hypothesized that the measurements of LWF could be used for the detection and grading of prostatic tumours. To verify these hypotheses, we performed two patient studies in which we compared MR measurements of LWI with whole-mount histology. In the first study, we evaluated the correlation between LWF and the percentage area of luminal space in the prostatic tissue. The results of this study demonstrated that LWF is significantly and strongly correlated with the percentage area of luminal space in the prostatic tissue. In the second study, we investigated the feasibility of LWI in the detection and grading of prostate cancer. The results of this study showed that LWI provides high accuracy both in the detection and grading of prostatic tumours. After verifying our hypotheses, we performed a detailed comparison between the diagnostic accuracy of LWI and the more established MRI techniques: Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced (DCE) and Diffusion-Weighted MRI (DW-MRI). The results of this pilot study showed that LWI alone performs better than DCE, DW-MRI, or their combination, in the detection of prostatic tumours and also in correlation with GS. Based on the results of this study, we proposed a guideline for making a more efficient, abbreviated multi-parametric MRI protocol for the diagnosis of prostate cancer. Finally, as a side project, we explored some potential areas of improvement in DCE-MRI by investigating the impact of temporal resolution on the accuracy of DCE-MRI in detection of prostatic tumours. Our results showed that within a certain range of temporal resolutions, the diagnostic accuracy of DCE-MRI would be independent of the temporal resolution.

Text

2017-08-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62882

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/