Prognostic value of ultrasound elastography versus Transrectal prostatic biopsy in early prostatic cancer detection

Abstract

Elastography was introduced in early 1990, it is an easy procedure with high diagnostic performance which can be easily integrated with the B-mode ultrasound examination in the same session and improves its specificity. It has proven benefit in minimizing the number of unnecessary biopsies. Elastography is an imaging technique that refers to the measurement of elastic properties of tissues, based on the well established principle that malignant tissue is harder than normal and benign tissues. It measures the relative stiffness of lesions in contrast to the surrounding normal tissue; the information displayed in the images is a surrogate for that obtained with manual palpation. In prostatic cancer, conventional B-mode ultrasound is often used to investigate suspicious findings, but it tends to result in more biopsies because of its relatively low specificity. Several studies have been performed on elastography aiming to improve ultrasound specificity in differentiating between benign and malignant lesions hence help to reduce the number of unnecessary