The Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust is trialling an AI software tool for detecting prostate cancer lesions on MRI scans.
Prostate cancer has a complex diagnostic pathway, and the trust aims to use this tool to speed up the process of prioritising patients with the disease.
By freeing up radiologists to report on additional patients every day, the technology could in future allow patients to be booked for a biopsy more quickly.
Reducing anxiety and waiting times
Around one in eight men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, making it the most common cancer among men. Black men face even higher risks, with one in four being diagnosed.
MRI plays a “critical role” in diagnosis and guiding targeted biopsies.
Dr Oliver Hulson, consultant radiologist at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust (LTHT), said: “If successful, this [trial] could enable us to streamline our prostate cancer pathway and reduce the waiting time for a biopsy from the current two to three weeks to less than one week. Ultimately, faster diagnosis means faster treatment and better outcomes for our patients.”
“The aim would be to provide our patients with a rapid diagnostic approach, or ‘one-stop shop’ where they could potentially have their MRI scan in the morning, reviewed by the radiologist with the benefit of the AI tool, and if needed, plan for their biopsy that afternoon, performing all their investigations in a single day, rather than over weeks as is the case currently.
“This would of course reduce their anxiety whilst waiting for tests and would provide their results as quickly as possible”.
Revolutionising the diagnostic pathway
AI-generated results from the Prostate Intelligence (Pi) tool will be compared against real-world outcomes for 100 patients who have recently completed the prostate cancer pathway.
Pi assists radiologists by highlighting potential areas of concern on MRI scans and assessing risk scores and prostate size, which can impact biopsy and treatment decisions.
Biopsy data from patients in the Netherlands and UK has been used to train the software, which runs automatically as soon as a patient’s MRI scan is completed and provides outputs when reviewed by the clinical team.
WIth expert support from the trust’s medical physics team and academic partners at Leeds University, initial retrospective data collection is underway. A prospective pilot study is planned for autumn.
As the project progresses, the team hopes that the AI software will prove both sensitive and specific in identifying prostate cancer, potentially revolutionising the diagnostic pathway and expediting patient care.
The trial is being run in conjunction with Lucida Medical, a start-up business spun out from the University of Cambridge which develops the software.
(Image: Olly Hulson, via Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust)