果冻影院

The technology combines MRI scans with ultrasound images to better pinpoint prostate cancer and provide surgeons with a precise location to biopsy. With 1 in 8 men estimated to get prostate cancer in their lifetime, the potential impact of improved treatment and early diagnosis for millions of patients worldwide is vast.

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Professor David Hawkes (Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences), a computational scientist and member of the 果冻影院 team that developed SmartTarget, was one of the first patients to benefit from this when the software was used to diagnose his own prostate cancer three years ago and played a vital role in his treatment. Interviewed by CBS Philly about his experience he says, 鈥淔or anybody who is diagnosed with the likelihood of cancer, it鈥檚 quite a shock. But it did give me the opportunity to have that technology used on me鈥�. The news segment can be watched in full .

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The software has been evaluated on hundreds of patients to date, including 129 men who took part in a targeted prostate biopsy trial at 果冻影院 Hospital (果冻影院H) during which the software successfully diagnosed more than 90 percent of prostate cancers. Dr Dean Barratt (果冻影院 Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering/CMIC/WEISS), who invented and led the system鈥檚 development, explains 鈥淲e developed the SmartTarget system to equip surgeons with vital information about the size, shape and location of prostate tumours during a biopsy that is otherwise invisible on ultrasound images.鈥�

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鈥淭he software provides them with a clear target. As MRI-targeted biopsies require a very high degree of expertise and experience, we hope that the imagery displayed by SmartTarget will help to bring high accuracy prostate cancer diagnosis to a much wider range of patients and hospitals.鈥澨�

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The team that made this research possible was highly interdisciplinary, involving engineers, computer scientists, clinicians, clinical trial co-ordinators, health economists, and business experts from across 果冻影院, 果冻影院 Business PLC (果冻影院B), and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.听 The 果冻影院 clinical leads were Professor Mark Emberton (果冻影院 Medical Sciences), Professor Caroline Moore (果冻影院 Medical Sciences), and Professor Hashim Ahmed (now at Imperial College London). The technology is based heavily on the patented research of Dr Yipeng Hu (果冻影院 Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering/WEISS) and Rachael Rodell (SmartTarget Ltd) is the lead software engineer responsible for the commercial software product. The SmartTarget software has been commercialised by SmartTarget Ltd, a company spun out by 果冻影院鈥�s commercialisation company 果冻影院B and the system has been in use by several hospitals in the UK and USA.

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Additional reading:

research paper in European Urology