Clinical use of multidimensional diffusion MRI

Important results from the project

A major disadvantage of today´s prostate cancer diagnosis is that there are both patients who are diagnosed as sick (even though they are healthy) and thus treated unnecessarily, with severe side effects as a result, and patients who are diagnosed as healthy, but in fact need to be treated. While the MRI techniques of today are very sensitive to tissue changes, they suffer from low diagnostic specificity. The goal of this project was to prepare documentation to improve prostate cancer diagnosis using new, more specific MRI techniques.

Expected long term effects

This project has led to significant insights for the development of an analysis software that may in the future be tested for improved prostate cancer diagnostics. With the help of Vinnova´s project grants, we have been able to gather information that has led to the software being able to be developed at an earlier stage, during the course of the project, instead of being initiated after the end of the project.

Approach and implementation

The design of the project has enabled close cooperation between future possible project partners. Thus, in the future, we will have good opportunities to begin the preclinical and clinical testing of the finished software together with project partners who already know each other. The project has both cultivated academia and industry relations, as well as provided documentation that is necessary to be able to produce a future clinical product to provide patients with an improved prostate cancer diagnosis.