An early and accurate diagnosis is the most important step towards a successful cancer treatment. Modern medicine has ways to achieve that, but some things still need improvement. Now a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that makes cancerous tissue glow in medical images is coming up as an innovation of researchers at the University of Waterloo.
MRI is one of the most important tools in cancer diagnosis, but it can be improved. Image credit: Irekia – Gobierno Abierto via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
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Cancer starts when there are errors in the cell division process. This causes tumours, which are basically uncontrolled growth in tissues. Tumours severely compromise the organ function, facilitate the spread of cancer and can ultimately cause death. However, at the beginning of the disease tumours may be difficult to spot, because at the start they are just some irregularly organised cells in the tissue. And the new synthetic correlated diffusion imaging, as this technology is called, can help spot those irregularly packed cells.
Synthetic correlated diffusion imaging technology essentially highlights differences between healthy and unhealthy tissues. Those differences lie in the way water molecules move in cancerous tissue compared to healthy tissue. The technology itself synthesises and mixes MRI signals at different gradient pulse strengths and timings, which makes those irregularly packed cells light up in the medical images making them much easier to spot. Researchers conducted a study and found that compared to the regular MRI the synthetic correlated diffusion imaging technology is better at delineating significant cancerous tissue, which significantly improves diagnostics.
Synthetic correlated diffusion imaging technology could be very useful in screening for many different types of cancers. Alexander Wong,one of the engineers and scientists in this project, said: “Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide and the most frequently diagnosed cancer among men in more developed countries. That's why we targeted it first in our research. We also have very promising results for breast cancer screening, detection, and treatment planning.”
Artificial intelligence plays a key role in this process and this is just another example of how AI can be extremely useful in medical science. Its biggest advantage is the ability to analyse huge pools of data very quickly and notice patterns that are too small for the human eye.
So far the synthetic correlated diffusion imaging technology was tested only with 200 patients with prostate cancer. Initial testing was successful, but a lot remains to be done until this technology can be brought to a broader clinical use.
Source: University of Waterloo