Evidence grows for high-field MRI’s value in prostate cancer

The new treatments for prostate cancer require precise localization of disease, but routinely used imaging techniques are not sensitive or specific enough for accurate staging. Gray-scale transrectal ultrasound has a sensitivity of 30% to 50% and specificity of 77% to 90% for local staging and tumor localization, and 1.5T MRI has a joint sensitivity and specificity of 71% to 74% for conventional anatomical prostate imaging, according to recent research.