A review on the role of mp-MRI for detection, localization and staging of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) has been one of the most prevalent cancers in men in recent years. Multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) has been increasingly applied in the diagnosis, localization and staging of prostate cancer. This approach uses a combination of morphology information obtained from T2-weighted image along with at least two functional imaging modalities, such as diffusion-weighted (DWI), dynamic-contrast-enhancement (DCE), and magnetic-resonance-spectroscopy (MRS). This review gives a comprehensive overview of the theories and methodologies of the mp-MRI for diagnosing prostate cancer. The search was fulfilled using a list of search engines.

In this study, with a systematic review of studies conducted during February 2015 to October 2021, the role and potential of integrating the results of morphological and functional imaging in a multi-parameter approach were evaluated and the optimal combination was introduced. This article collected studies that have employed mp-MRI in prostate cancer including: peer-reviews, research articles, academic reports and conferences. This review has been studied from September 2016 to January 2022.

According to the reported results, the optimum combination of T2-w, DWI and DCE in the mp-MRI approach provides the highest sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis, localization and staging of prostate cancer. Applying the field strength of 3T versus 1.5T improves detection accuracy including improving sensitivity and specificity as well, and also the application of endorectal coils does not provide much advantage compared to pelvic phased-array coil in term of prostate cancer detection accuracy. 

MP-MRI as a precision instrument plays a valuable role in the diagnosis of prostate cancer. The most suitable combination of the pulse sequences to achieve the goals of this approach is T2-w, DWI and DCE. This review is comprehensive overview covered previous articles of mp-MRI in prostate cancer for all the researchers in this field and expresses the positive and negative points of each modality. Moreover, this article reports the sensitivity and the Specificity of the recent researches.