A Critical Analysis of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lesion Diameter Threshold for Adverse Pathology Features

Abstract

To investigate the relationship between lesion size determined using multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) and histopathological findings of specimens obtained after mpMRI fusion biopsy and radical prostatectomy (RP). We retrospectively analysed 290 patients with PCa who underwent an MRI fusion biopsy. We measured the diameter of suspicious tumour lesions on diffusion-weighted mpMRI and stratified the cohort into two groups. Group A included patients with a suspicious tumour lesion 10 mm and Group B included those with a suspicious tumour lesion > 10 mm. In Group B, the PI-RADS score determined in mpMRI was higher than Group A, and there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of clinical T-stage. The PCa detection rate and the number of positive cores were statistically significantly higher in Group B than in Group A. In addition, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in relation to the biopsy, the International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade values, and the presence of clinically significant PCa. In Group B, pathological T-stage and extraprostatic extension (EPE) and surgical margin (SM) positivity were found to be higher among the patients who underwent RP. In the multivariate analysis, the mpMRI lesion size being > 10 mm was found to be an independent predictive factor for SM and EPE positivity. The clinical results of this study support the modification of the lesion size threshold as 10 mm for use in the differentiation of PI-RADS scores 4 and 5.