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Following (or not) the guidelines for use of imaging in management of prostate cancer

Posted in Biomarkers & Medical Diagnostics, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, FDA, CE Mark & Global Regulatory Affairs: process management and strategic planning - GCP, GLP, ISO 14155, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, Medical Device Therapies for Altzheimer’s Disease, Medical Imaging Technology, Image Processing/Computing, MRI, CT, Nuclear Medicine, Ultra Sound, Population Health Management, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, Regulated Clinical Trials: Design, Methods, Components and IRB related issues, tagged guidlines, health, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, management of prostate cancer, Medical imaging, medicine, Personalized medicine, Prostate cancer, prostate cancer imaging, prostate cancer patients on August 29, 2013| 1 Comment »

Following (or not) the guidelines for use of imaging in management of prostate cancer.

Writer and curator: Dror Nir, PhD

Over diagnosis and over treatment is a trend of the last two decades. It leads to increase in health-care costs and human-misery.

The following headline on Medscape; Swedes Show That We Can Improve Imaging in Prostate Cancer elicited my curiosity.

I was expecting “good news” – well, not this time!

In spite the “general language” the study that the above mentioned headline refers to is not addressing the global use of imaging in prostate cancer patients’ pathway but is specific to use of radionuclide bone-scans as part of patients’ staging. The “bad-news” are that realization that the Swedish government had to invest many man-years to achieve “success” in reducing unnecessary use of such imaging in low risk patients. Moreover, the paper reveals under-use of such imaging technology for staging high risk prostate cancer patients.

Based on this paper, one could come to the conclusion that in reality, we are facing long lasting non-conformity with established guidelines related to the use of “full-body” imaging as part of the prostate cancer patients’ pathway in Europe and USA.

Here is a link to the original paper:

Prostate Cancer Imaging Trends After a Nationwide Effort to Discourage Inappropriate Prostate Cancer Imaging, Danil V. Makarov, Stacy Loeb, David Ulmert, Linda Drevin, Mats Lambe and Pär Stattin Correspondence to: Pär Stattin, MD, PhD, Department of Surgery and Perioperative Sciences, Urology and Andrology, Umeå University, SE- 901 87 Umeå, Sweden (e-mail:par.stattin@urologi.umu.se).

JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2013)doi: 10.1093/jnci/djt175

For convenience, here are the highlights:

Reducing inappropriate use of imaging to stage incident prostate cancer is a challenging problem highlighted recently as a Physician Quality Reporting System quality measure and by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Urological Association in the Choosing Wisely campaign.

Since 2000, the National Prostate Cancer Register (NPCR) of Sweden has led an effort to decrease national rates of inappropriate prostate cancer imaging by disseminating utilization data along with the latest imaging guidelines to urologists in Sweden.

Results Thirty-six percent of men underwent imaging within 6 months of prostate cancer diagnosis. Overall, imaging use decreased over time, particularly in the low-risk category, among whom the imaging rate decreased from 45% to 3% (P < .001), but also in the high-risk category, among whom the rate decreased from 63% to 47% (P < .001). Despite substantial regional variation, all regions experienced clinically and statistically (P < .001) significant decreases in prostate cancer imaging.

These results may inform current efforts to promote guideline-concordant imaging in the United States and internationally.

In 1998, the baseline low-risk prostate cancer imaging rate in Sweden was 45%. Per the NCCN guidelines (7), none of these men should have received bone imaging unless they presented with symptoms suggestive of bone pain (8,24). In the United States, the imaging rate among men with low-risk prostate cancer has been reported to be 19% to 74% in a community cohort and 10% to 48% in a Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)–Medicare cohort (10–13,16). It is challenging to compare these rates directly across the two countries because the NPCR aggregates all staging imaging into one variable. However, our sampling revealed that 88% of those undergoing imaging had at least a bone scan, whereas only 11% had any CTs and 10% had any MRI. This suggests that baseline rates of bone scan among low-risk men in Sweden were similar to those among their low-risk counterparts in the United States, whereas rates of axial imaging were likely much lower. During the study period, rates of prostate cancer imaging among low-risk men in Sweden decreased to 3%, substantially lower than those reported in the United States at any time.

Miller et al. describe a decline in imaging associated with a small-scale intervention administered in three urology practices located in the United States participating in a quality-improvement consortium. Our study’s contribution is to demonstrate that a similar strategy can be applied effectively at a national scale with an associated decline in inappropriate imaging rates, a finding of great interest for policy makers in the United States seeking to improve health-care quality.

In 1998, the baseline high-risk prostate cancer imaging rates in Sweden were 63%, and decreased by 43% in 2008 (rising slightly to 47% in 2009). Based on our risk category definitions and the guidelines advocated in Sweden, all of these men should have undergone an imaging evaluation (8,24). Swedish rates of prostate cancer imaging among men with high-risk disease are considerably lower than those reported from the SEER–Medicare cohort, where 70% to 75% underwent bone scan and 57% to 58% underwent CT (13,16). These already low rates of imaging among men with high-risk prostate cancer only decreased further during the NPCR’s effort to promote guideline-concordant imaging. Clearly in both countries, imaging for high-risk prostate cancer remains underused despite the general overuse of imaging and numerous guidelines encouraging its appropriate use (3–9).

Similar items I have covered on this this Open Access Online Scientific Journal:

Not applying evidence-based medicine drives up the costs of screening for breast-cancer in the USA.

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The unfortunate ending of the Tower of Babel construction project and its effect on modern imaging-based cancer patients’ management

Posted in Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, tagged biopsies, brain lesion, breast biopsies, breast biopsy, breast cancer, breast cancer mortality, breast cancer screening, breast screening, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, cancer patient management, Clinical trial, cost efficient cancer diagnosis, cost efficient cancer treatment, cost efficient solution, CT scans, directed biopsies, DW MRI, efficient business, european congress of radiology, evidence based medicine, free hand biopsies, guided biopsies, hands on appoach, health, healthcare, healthcare business, imaging guided biopsies, imaging in cancer, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management | Tagged biopsies, innovation in health, innovation in healthcare, Magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance imaging mri, magnetic tracking, mammography, Medical Devices R&D Investment, medicine, MRI, MRI imaging, multi-functional MRI, mutation, open mri systems, personalised medicine, prostat cancer screening, Prostate, Prostate biopsy, Prostate cancer, prostate guided biopsies, prostate hisoscanning, Prostate-specific antigen, radiographically dense breasts, research, science, tagged biopsy needles, tagged cancer, tracking, Transrectal ultrasonography, Triple-negative breast cancer, TRUS, ultrasound guided breast biopsy breast biopsy, ultrasound imaging, ultrasound imaging Bio Instrumentation in Experimental Life Sciences Research on October 22, 2012| 4 Comments »

The unfortunate ending of the Tower of Babel construction project and its effect on modern imaging-based cancer patients’ management

Curator: Dror Nir, PhD

The story of the city of Babel is recorded in the book of Genesis 11 1-9. At that time, everyone on earth spoke the same language.

Picture: Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel_(Vienna)

It is probably safe to assume that medical practitioners at that time were reporting the status of their patients in a standard manner. Although not mentioned, one might imagine that, at that time, ultrasound or MRI scans were also reported in a standard and transferrable manner. The people of Babel noticed the potential in uniform communication and tried to build a tower so high that it would reach the gods. Unfortunately, God did not like that, so he went down (in person) and confounded people’s speech, so that they could not understand each another. Genesis 11:7–8.

This must be the explanation for our inability to come to a consensus on reporting of patients’ imaging-outcome. Progress in development of efficient imaging protocols and in clinical management of patients is withheld due to high variability and subjectivity of clinicians’ approach to this issue.

Clearly, a justification could be found for not reaching a consensus on imaging protocols: since the way imaging is performed affects the outcome, (i.e. the image and its interpretation) it takes a long process of trial-and-error to come up with the best protocol. But, one might wonder, wouldn’t the search for the ultimate protocol converge faster if all practitioners around the world, who are conducting hundreds of clinical studies related to imaging-based management of cancer patients, report their results in a standardized and comparable manner?

Is there a reason for not reaching a consensus on imaging reporting? And I’m not referring only to intra-modality consensus, e.g. standardizing all MRI reports. I’m referring also to inter-modality consensus to enable comparison and matching of reports generated from scans of the same organ by different modalities, e.g. MRI, CT and ultrasound.

As developer of new imaging-based technologies, my personal contribution to promoting standardized and objective reporting was the implementation of preset reporting as part of the prostate-HistoScanning product design. For use-cases, as demonstrated below, in which prostate cancer patients were also scanned by MRI a dedicated reporting scheme enabled matching of the HistoScanning scan results with the prostate’s MRI results.

The MRI reporting scheme used as a reference is one of the schemes offered in a report by Miss Louise Dickinson on the following European consensus meeting : Magnetic Resonance Imaging for the Detection, Localisation, and Characterisation of Prostate Cancer: Recommendations from a European Consensus Meeting, Louise Dickinson ^a,b,c,*, Hashim U. Ahmed^a,b, Clare Allen^d, Jelle O. Barentsz^e, Brendan Carey^f, Jurgen J. Futterer^e, Stijn W. Heijmink^e, Peter J. Hoskin^g, Alex Kirkham^d, Anwar R. Padhani h, Raj Persadⁱ, Philippe Puech ^j, Shonit Punwani^d, Aslam S. Sohaib^k, Bertrand Tombal^l,Arnauld Villers^m, Jan van der Meulen^c,n, Mark Emberton a,b,c,

http://www.europeanurology.com/article/S0302-2838(10)01187-5

Image of MRI reporting scheme taken from the report by Miss Louise Dickinson

The corresponding HistoScanning report is following the same prostate segmentation and the same analysis plans:

Preset reporting enabling matching of HistoScanning and MRI reporting of the same case.

It is my wish that already in the near-future, the main radiology societies (RSNA, ESR, etc..) will join together to build the clinical Imaging’s “Tower of Babel” to effectively address the issue of standardizing reporting of imaging procedures. This time it will not be destroyed…:-)

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Knowing the tumor’s size and location, could we target treatment to THE ROI by applying imaging-guided intervention?

Posted in CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, tagged biopsies, brain lesion, breast biopsies, breast biopsy, breast cancer, breast cancer mortality, breast cancer screening, breast screening, Cancer - General, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, cancer patient management, Clinical trial, cost efficient cancer diagnosis, cost efficient cancer treatment, cost efficient solution, CT scans, directed biopsies, DW MRI, efficient business, european congress of radiology, evidence based medicine, free hand biopsies, guided biopsies, hands on appoach, health, healthcare, healthcare business, imaging guided biopsies, imaging in cancer, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management | Tagged biopsies, innovation in health, innovation in healthcare, Magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance imaging mri, magnetic tracking, mammography, Medical Devices R&D Investment, medicine, MRI, MRI imaging, multi-functional MRI, mutation, open mri systems, personalised medicine, prostat cancer screening, Prostate, Prostate biopsy, Prostate cancer, prostate guided biopsies, prostate hisoscanning, Prostate-specific antigen, radiographically dense breasts, research, science, tagged biopsy needles, tracking, Transrectal ultrasonography, Triple-negative breast cancer, TRUS, ultrasound guided breast biopsy breast biopsy, ultrasound imaging, ultrasound imaging Bio Instrumentation in Experimental Life Sciences Research on October 16, 2012| 25 Comments »

Knowing the tumor’s size and location, could we target treatment to THE ROI by applying imaging-guided intervention?

Author: Dror Nir, PhD

Advances in techniques for cancer lesions’ detection and localisation [1-6] opened the road to methods of localised (“focused”) cancer treatment [7-10]. An obvious challenge on the road is reassuring that the imaging-guided treatment device indeed treats the region of interest and preferably, only it.

A step in that direction was taken by a group of investigators from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada who evaluate the feasibility and safety of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging–controlled transurethral ultrasound therapy for prostate cancer in humans [7]. Their study’s objective was to prove that using real-time MRI guidance of HIFU treatment is possible and it guarantees that the location of ablated tissue indeed corresponds to the locations planned for treatment. Eight eligible patients were recruited.

The setup

Treatment protocol

The result

“There was excellent agreement between the zone targeted for treatment and the zone of thermal injury, with a targeting accuracy of ±2.6 mm. In addition, the temporal evolution of heating was very consistent across all patients, in part because of the ability of the system to adapt to changes in perfusion or absorption properties according to the temperature measurements along the target boundary.”

Technological problems to be resolved in the future:

“Future device designs could incorporate urinary drainage during the procedure, given the accumulation of urine in the bladder during treatment.”

“Sufficient temperature resolution could be achieved only by using 10-mm-thick sections. Our numeric studies suggest that 5-mm-thick sections are necessary for optimal three-dimensional conformal heating and are achievable by using endorectal imaging coils or by performing the treatment with a 3.0-T platform.”

Major limitation: “One of the limitations of the study was the inability to evaluate the efficacy of this treatment; however, because this represents, to our knowledge, the first use of this technology in human prostate, feasibility and safety were emphasized. In addition, the ability to target the entire prostate gland was not assessed, again for safety considerations. We have not attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of this treatment for eradicating cancer or achieving durable biochemical non-evidence of disease status.”

References

SIMMONS (L.A.M.), AUTIER (P.), ZATURA (F.), BRAECKMAN (J.G.), PELTIER (A.), ROMICS (I.), STENZL (A.), TREURNICHT (K.), WALKER (T.), NIR (D.), MOORE (C.M.), EMBERTON (M.). Detection, localisation and characterisation of prostate cancer by Prostate HistoScanning.. British Journal of Urology International (BJUI). Issue 1 (July). Vol. 110, Page(s): 28-35
WILKINSON (L.S.), COLEMAN (C.), SKIPPAGE (P.), GIVEN-WILSON (R.), THOMAS (V.). Breast HistoScanning: The development of a novel technique to improve tissue characterization during breast ultrasound. European Congress of Radiology (ECR), A.4030, C-0596, 03-07/03/2011.
Hebert Alberto Vargas, MD, Tobias Franiel, MD,Yousef Mazaheri, PhD, Junting Zheng, MS, Chaya Moskowitz, PhD, Kazuma Udo, MD, James Eastham, MD and Hedvig Hricak, MD, PhD, Dr(hc) Diffusion-weighted Endorectal MR Imaging at 3 T for Prostate Cancer: Tumor Detection and Assessment of Aggressiveness. June 2011 Radiology, 259,775-784.
Wendie A. Berg, Kathleen S. Madsen, Kathy Schilling, Marie Tartar, Etta D. Pisano, Linda Hovanessian Larsen, Deepa Narayanan, Al Ozonoff, Joel P. Miller, and Judith E. Kalinyak Breast Cancer: Comparative Effectiveness of Positron Emission Mammography and MR Imaging in Presurgical Planning for the Ipsilateral Breast Radiology January 2011 258:1 59-72.
Anwar R. Padhani, Dow-Mu Koh, and David J. Collins Reviews and Commentary – State of the Art: Whole-Body Diffusion-weighted MR Imaging in Cancer: Current Status and Research Directions Radiology December 2011 261:3 700-718
Eggener S, Salomon G, Scardino PT, De la Rosette J, Polascik TJ, Brewster S. Focal therapy for prostate cancer: possibilities and limitations. Eur Urol 2010;58(1):57–64).
Rajiv Chopra, PhD, Alexandra Colquhoun, MD, Mathieu Burtnyk, PhD, William A. N’djin, PhD, Ilya Kobelevskiy, MSc, Aaron Boyes, BSc, Kashif Siddiqui, MD, Harry Foster, MD, Linda Sugar, MD, Masoom A. Haider, MD, Michael Bronskill, PhD and Laurence Klotz, MD. MR Imaging–controlled Transurethral Ultrasound Therapy for Conformal Treatment of Prostate Tissue: Initial Feasibility in Humans. October 2012 Radiology, 265,303-313.
Black, Peter McL. M.D., Ph.D.; Alexander, Eben III M.D.; Martin, Claudia M.D.; Moriarty, Thomas M.D., Ph.D.; Nabavi, Arya M.D.; Wong, Terence Z. M.D., Ph.D.; Schwartz, Richard B. M.D., Ph.D.; Jolesz, Ferenc M.D. Craniotomy for Tumor Treatment in an Intraoperative Magnetic Resonance Imaging Unit. Neurosurgery: September 1999 – Volume 45 – Issue 3 – p 423
Medel, Ricky MD, Monteith, Stephen J. MD, Elias, W. Jeffrey MD, Eames, Matthew PhD, Snell, John PhD, Sheehan, Jason P. MD, PhD, Wintermark, Max MD, MAS, Jolesz, Ferenc A. MD, Kassell, Neal F. MD. Neurosurgery: Magnetic Resonance–Guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery: Part 2: A Review of Current and Future Applications. October 2012 – Volume 71 – Issue 4 – p 755–763
Bruno Quesson PhD, Jacco A. de Zwart PhD, Chrit T.W. Moonen PhD. Magnetic resonance temperature imaging for guidance of thermotherapy. Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Special Issue: Interventional MRI, Part 1, Volume 12, Issue 4, pages 525–533, October 2000

Writer: Dror Nir, PhD

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Introducing smart-imaging into radiologists’ daily practice.

Posted in Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, tagged biopsies, brain lesion, breast biopsies, breast biopsy, breast cancer, breast cancer mortality, breast cancer screening, breast screening, Cancer - General, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, cancer patient management, Clinical trial, cost efficient cancer diagnosis, cost efficient cancer treatment, cost efficient solution, CT scans, directed biopsies, DW MRI, efficient business, european congress of radiology, evidence based medicine, free hand biopsies, guided biopsies, hands on appoach, health, healthcare, healthcare business, imaging guided biopsies, imaging in cancer, Imaging-based Cancer Patient Management, innovation in health, innovation in healthcare, Magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance imaging mri, magnetic tracking, mammography, Medical Devices R&D Investment, medicine, MRI, MRI imaging, multi-functional MRI, mutation, open mri systems, personalised medicine, prostat cancer screening, Prostate, Prostate biopsy, Prostate cancer, prostate guided biopsies, prostate hisoscanning, Prostate-specific antigen, radiographically dense breasts, science, tagged biopsy needles, tracking, Transrectal ultrasonography, Triple-negative breast cancer, TRUS, ultrasound guided breast biopsy breast biopsy, ultrasound imaging Bio Instrumentation in Experimental Life Sciences Research on October 9, 2012| 6 Comments »

Introducing smart-imaging into radiologists’ daily practice.

Author and Curator: Dror Nir, PhD

Radiology congresses are all about imaging in medicine. Interestingly, radiology originates from radiation. It was the discovery of X-ray radiation at the beginning of the 20^th century that opened the road to “seeing” the inside of the human body without harming it (at that time that meant cutting into the body).

Radiology meetings are about sharing experience and knowhow on imaging-based management patients. The main topic is always image-interpretation: the bottom line of clinical radiology! This year’s European Congress of Radiology (ECR) dedicated few of its sessions to recent developments in image-interpretation tools. I chose to discuss the one that I consider contributing the most to the future of cancer patients’ management.

In the refresher course dedicated to computer application the discussion was aimed at understanding the question “How do image processing and CAD impact radiological daily practice?” Experts’ reviews gave the audience some background information on the following subjects:

A. The link between image reconstruction and image analysis.
B. Semantic web technologies for sharing and reusing imaging-related information
C. Image processing and CAD: workflow in clinical practice.

I find item A to be a fundamental education item. Not once did I hear a radiologist saying: “I know this is the lesion because it’s different on the image”. Being aware of the computational concepts behind image rendering, even if it is at a very high level and lacking deep understanding of the computational processes, will contribute to more balanced interpretations.

Item B is addressing the dream of investigators worldwide. Imagine that we could perform a web search and find educating, curated materials linking visuals and related clinical information, including standardized pathology reporting. We would only need to remember that search engines used certain search methods and agree, worldwide, on the method and language to be used when describing things. Having such tools is a pre-requisite to successful pharmaceutical and bio-tech development.

I find item C strongly linked to A, as all methods for better image interpretation must fit into a workflow. This is a design goal that is not trivial to achieve. To understand what I mean by that, try to think about how you could integrate the following examples in your daily workflow: i.e. what kind of expertise is needed for execution, how much time it will take, do you have the infrastructure?

In the rest of this post, I would like to highlight, through examples that were discussed during ECR 2012, the aspect of improving cancer patients’ clinical assessment by using information fusion to support better image interpretation.

Adding up quantitative information from MR spectroscopy (quantifies biochemical property of a target lesion) and Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MR imaging (highlights lesion vasculature).

Image provided by: Dr. Pascal Baltzer, director of mammography at the centre for radiology at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany

Registration of images generated by different imaging modalities (Multi-modal imaging registration).

The following examples: Fig 2 demonstrates registration of a mammography image of a breast lesion to an MRI image of this lesion. Fig3 demonstrates registration of an ultrasound image of a breast lesion scanned by an Automatic Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) system and an MRI image of the same lesion.

Images provided by members of the HAMAM project (an EU, FP7 funded research project: Highly Accurate Breast Cancer Diagnosis through Integration of Biological Knowledge, Novel Imaging Modalities, and Modelling): http://www.hamam-project.org

Multi-modality image registration is usually based on the alignment of image-features apparent in the scanned regions. For ABUS-MRI matching these were: the location of the nipple and the breast thickness; the posterior of the nipple in both modalities; the medial-lateral distance of the nipple to the breast edge on ultrasound; and an approximation of the ribcage using a cylinder on the MRI. A mean accuracy of 14mm was achieved.

Also from the HAMAM project, registration of ABUS image to a mammography image:

registration of ABUS image to a mammography image, Image provided by members of the HAMAM project (an EU, FP7 funded research project: Highly Accurate Breast Cancer Diagnosis through Integration of Biological Knowledge, Novel Imaging Modalities, and Modelling): http://www.hamam-project.org

Automatic segmentation of suspicious regions of interest seen in breast MRI images

Segmentation of suspicious the lesions on the image is the preliminary step in tumor evaluation; e.g. finding its size and location. Since lesions have different signal/image characteristics to the rest of the breast tissue, it gives hope for the development of computerized segmentation techniques. If successful, such techniques bear the promise of enhancing standardization in the reporting of lesions size and location: Very important information for the success of the treatment step.

Roberta Fusco of the National Cancer Institute of Naples Pascal Foundation, Naples/IT suggested the following automatic method for suspicious ROI selection within the breast using dynamic-derived information from DCE-MRI data.

Automatic segmentation of suspicious ROI in breast MRI images, image provided by Roberta Fusco of the National Cancer Institute of Naples Pascal Foundation, Naples/IT

Her algorithm includes three steps (Figure 2): (i) breast mask extraction by means of automatic intensity threshold estimation (Otsu Thresh-holding) on the parametric map obtained through the sum of intensity differences (SOD) calculated pixel by pixel; (ii) hole-filling and leakage repair by means of morphological operators: closing is required to fill the holes on the boundaries of breast mask, filling is required to fill the holes within the breasts, erosion is required to reduce the dilation obtained by the closing operation; (iii) suspicious ROIs extraction: a pixel is assigned to a suspicious ROI if it satisfies two conditions: the maximum of its normalized time-intensity curve should be greater than 0.3 and the maximum signal intensity should be reached before the end of the scan time. The first condition assures that the pixels within the ROI have a significant contrast agent uptake (thus excluding type I and type II curves) and the second condition is required for the time-intensity pattern to be of type IV or V (thus excluding type III curves).

Written by: Dror Nir, PhD