New technology fuses MRI, ultrasound to achieve targeted biopsy of prostate cancer

A new prostate-imaging technology that fuses MRI with real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound may offer a more exacting method to obtain biopsy specimens from suspicious areas within the organ.

Four UCLA departments — urology, radiology, pathology and biomedical engineering — collaborated with the medical device company Eigen Inc. to develop and test the technology. The team's early experiences with it are reported in the online May–June issue of Urologic Oncology.

"It's difficult to identify and target suspicious areas using two-dimensional, conventional ultrasound, so urologists currently take samples systematically from the entire prostate," said study author Dr. Leonard Marks, a professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "The advent of MRI–ultrasound fusion has led to a promising advance in prostate imaging and biopsy targeting.

"Despite the technology revolution of the past several decades, we are still performing prostate biopsies just the same as in the mid-1980s," he said. "We are hopeful that new imaging methods like MRI–ultrasound fusion may soon change that."

According to the American Cancer Society, 230,000 cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed this year, but not every one of them is deadly. Many small prostate cancers are not serious health threats, and in those cases, surveillance programs can help men avoid radical treatments like surgery. Many smaller cancers grow so slowly that they may never require treatment at all. The new imaging technology could help doctors differentiate the serious cancers from the insignificant.

source: UCLA

Baptist Health of Northeast Florida Acquires Brainsuite® iMRI and Brainsuite® iCT Digitally Integrated ORs

WESTCHESTER, Ill., April 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Baptist Health of Northeast Florida will be the first health system in North America to offer intra-operative imaging during pediatric and adult brain surgery and non-surgical radiosurgical procedures with the Brainlab Brainsuite® iMRI (intra-operative magnetic resonance imaging), featuring the GE Healthcare 1.5T Optima™ MR450w wide-bore scanner, and Brainsuite® iCT (intra-operative computed tomography), featuring the Siemens SOMATOM® Sensation Open CT scanner. They will be integrated into a new 11-story patient care tower scheduled to open in December 2012.

Two Baptist Health hospitals—Baptist Medical Center and Wolfson Children's Hospital—will be able to efficiently share the technology for neurosurgical procedures. The hospitals are well-known nationally for neurosurgery, and Baptist Medical Center was named in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Hospitals 2009-2010" and among the top 50 hospitals for neurology and neurosurgery.

"We're pleased to be able to provide our community with technology that can aid in the success of brain procedures," said John Wilbanks, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Baptist Health. "Brainsuite offers the possibility that patients will need fewer procedures and have better outcomes."

Brainsuite iMRI and iCT will create digitally integrated operating rooms that can provide intra-operative, diagnostic iMRI and iCT imaging and patient data. This will help to allow adult and pediatric neurosurgeons to determine a tumor's location and remove additional tumor cells while avoiding critical functional areas of the brain—all during the same procedure. Rather than waiting until after surgery to determine whether a procedure has removed diseased tissue from the brain (as is done traditionally), patients can be evaluated in the OR, while still under anesthesia, and neurosurgeons can perform additional surgery if needed.

source: PR Newswire