Prostate MRI for Improving Personalized Risk Prediction of Incontinence and Surgical Planning: The Role of Membranous Urethral Length Measurements and the Use of 3D Models

Abstract

Prostate MRI has an important role in prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, including detection, the targeting of prostate biopsies, staging and guiding radiotherapy and active surveillance. However, there are other ‘’less well-known’’ applications which are being studied and frequently used in our highly specialized medical center. In this review, we focus on two research topics that lie within the expertise of this study group: (1) anatomical parameters predicting the risk of urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy, allowing more personalized shared decision-making, with special emphasis on the membranous urethral length (MUL); (2) the use of three-dimensional models to help the surgical planning. These models may be used for training, patient counselling, personalized estimation of nerve sparing and extracapsular extension and may help to achieve negative surgical margins and undetectable postoperative PSA values.

Keywords

• prostatic neoplasms
• magnetic resonance imaging
• prostatectomy
• urinary continence
• urethra
• three-dimensional images