Prostate Cancer Diagnosis, Localisation and Characterisation using Ultrasound

ended

Prostate cancer (PCa), is a type of cancer with the highest incidence (19%) and second mortality rate (8%) in western men. In 2018 in Europe, 140,000 male patients were newly diagnosed with PCa and over 100,000 patients have died from Prostate cancer. Numbers are rising due to the ageing EU population. The present medical diagnosis procedures are largely based on the execution of multi-biopsy procedure(s) on the patient. Each multi-biopsy procedure is invasive, painful for the patient and incurs significant risk (10%-20%) of adverse health events such as sepsis (8%). Screening programs - comparable to breast cancer screening for woman - are not possible based on biopsy. In recent years, in a few EU countries, an image-based diagnosis method has been added to the PCa diagnosis pathway: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). A dedicated MRI imaging protocol offers an additional diagnosis tool for detecting and characterising PCa tumour growth. However, MRI based PCa diagnosis has drawbacks: scarce patient access (no public healthcare coverage in multiple EU countries) and long waiting times of 35 days median, increased national healthcare cost and dependent on availability of highly trained radiologist. The gap between the need for image based diagnosis and the availability is rapidly widening. PCaVision is a novel PCa imaging diagnostic method relying on modern ultrasound imaging equipment and advanced signal processing algorithms. Advantages are: equipment costs 96% less and there is not need for a specialised radiologist; the urologist performs the diagnosis. Hence PCaVision makes broad scale access for patients possible, improves PCa healthcare and reduces national healthcare cost. With PCaVision the gap can be closed for the benefit of all EU patients. The result of the Transition project is to complete, validate, and certify the PCaVision solution enabling roll-out to 16 EU clinics for clinical long-term demonstration enabling future broad utilisation.