Defining prostate cancer size and treatment margin for focal therapy: does intralesional heterogeneity impact the performance of multiparametric MRI?

To evaluate the impact of intralesional heterogeneity on the performance of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) in determining cancer extent and treatment margins for focal therapy (FT) of prostate cancer.

We identified men who underwent primary radical prostatectomy for organ‐ confined prostate cancer over a 3‐year period. Cancer foci on whole‐mount histology were marked out, coding low‐grade (LG; Gleason 3) and high‐grade (HG; Gleason 4–5) components separately. Measurements of entire tumours were grouped according to intralesional proportion of HG cancer: 0%, <50% and ≥50%; the readings were corrected for specimen shrinkage and correlated with matching lesions on mpMRI. Separate measurements were also taken of HG cancer components only, and correlated against entire lesions on mpMRI. Size discrepancies were used to derive the optimal tumour size and treatment margins for FT.

There were 122 MRI‐detected cancer lesions in 70 men. The mean linear specimen shrinkage was 8.4%. The overall correlation between histology and MRI dimensions was r = 0.79 (P < 0.001). Size correlation was superior for tumours with high burden (≥50%) compared to low burden (<50%) of HG cancer (r = 0.84 vs r = 0.63; P = 0.007). Size underestimation by mpMRI was more likely for larger tumours (51% for >12 mm vs 26% for ≤12 mm) and those containing HG cancer (44%, vs 20% for LG only). Size discrepancy analysis suggests an optimal tumour size of ≤12 mm and treatment margins of 5–6 mm for FT. For tumours ≤12 mm in diameter, applying 5‐ and 6‐mm treatment margins would achieve 98.6% and 100% complete tumour ablation, respectively. For tumours of all sizes, using the same margins would ablate >95% of the HG cancer components.

Multiparametric MRI performance in estimating prostate cancer size, and consequently the treatment margin for FT, is impacted by tumour size and the intralesional heterogeneity of cancer grades.