EXPERT ADVISORY: Advanced Prostate Imaging

By Sathya Achia Abraham

Jinxing Yu, M.D., director of oncologic imaging at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, is available to discuss the benefits of using advanced MR techniques to stage and better detect prostate cancer.

According to the latest American Cancer Society estimates for prostate cancer in the United States, about one man in six will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime and an estimated 28,170 patients die each year.

The VCU Medical Center offers a comprehensive program using several MR imaging techniques together to identify potentially aggressive, hard-to-see lesions of the prostate. The team includes highly trained experts, including radiologists, physicists and technologists, radiation oncologists and urologists. Three to five diagnostic prostate MRs are performed weekly at the VCU Medical Center.

“Currently the clinical screening and diagnosis of prostate cancer has limited success,” said Yu.

“We offer multiparametric prostate MRI to our patients ...The benefits of a prostate MRI study range from detection of the prostate cancer to helping guide the clinicians in treatment planning. We also are able to provide counsel for potential options including surgical versus non-surgical; active surveillance versus immediate treatment,” said Yu.

Yu, associate professor of radiology, has been performing the MR guided prostate biopsies for the past 14 months and has achieved significant success. According to Yu, he has found a number of aggressive hidden prostate cancers using this technology. He specializes in abdominal CT and MRI, as well as prostate MRI and oncology imaging. Yu has recently conducted several research projects in the area of prostate MRI and MRI guided prostate biopsy. He is American Board of Radiology certified.