Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer disease in men over the age of 50. The most common diagnostic methods, including prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood-test, suffer a high incidence of false-positive and false-negative findings and are insufficient to reliably define patients with high-risk prostate-cancer. The invasive and expensive needle-biopsy examination also lacks sensitivity.

A new detection concept for early diagnosis and grading of prostate cancer is presented. Prostate cancer being the sole disease causing the depletion of zinc - the method is based on in-vivo prostatic-zinc mapping by x-ray fluorescence (XRF) with a dedicated trans-rectal probe. The concept has been validated by extensive clinical studies of prostatic-zinc concentration measurements in biopsy samples.

Results of the clinical studies, in which the zinc-content was measured in needle-biopsy samples extracted from several hundred patients, will be presented, in correlation with histological findings and other patient parameters. They confirmed that the new method has better, more specific, diagnostic-power of prostate cancer compared to PSA tests.

We will present the suggested design of a trans-rectal probe for efficient in-vivo non-invasive detection and mapping of the prostatic-zinc and discuss its expected performance in providing the tumour’s presence, location, size and aggressiveness.

The new prostate diagnostic concept will permit better selection of patients for biopsy and is expected to dramatically reduce their number. It can be used for efficiently guiding biopsy probes to “suspicious” regions and providing better means for treatment planning as well as guidance of focal treatment tools; it will permit better follow-up of prostate-cancer patients.

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