Measurement of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) in serum is a cornerstone in the monitoring of asymptomatic prostate cancer (PCa) Patients after curative treatment, including both radical prostatectomy (RP) and radiotherapy (RT). A rapidly increasing PSA level (i.e., high PSA velocity and short PSA doubling time) is usually related to the presence of distant metastases (i.e., skeletal or lymph nodal), while a slow and progressive increase in serum PSA concentration is often because of local disease recurrence [1]. In Patients with biochemical recurrence, imaging plays a...

Patient population: we retrospectively evaluated 50 PCa patients presenting with biochemical relapse [11] after first-line surgery or EBRT. We also included patients with rising PSA levels after salvage EBRT or androgen deprivation therapy. All patients underwent 64CuCl2-PET/CT, 18F-Choline-PET/CT and mMRI within 15 days of one another. Then retrospective co-registration was performed to obtain Fused 64CuCl2 PET/MRI series and Fused 18F-Choline PET/MRI series. Multiparametric MRI: All patients underwent mMRI examinations performed with a 1.5 T MRI scanner (Signa HDxt, GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI) equipped with an...

Results showed that Fused 64CuCl2-PET/MRI had the highest DR, compared with all the other fusion and non-fusion techniques, in every site of recurrence (local, lymph-node metastases and bone metastases), as shown in Table 1. A significant difference was found between the DRs of Fused-64CuCl2-PET/MRI (88%) and Fused-18F-Choline-PET/MRI (68%; p=0.002). The DR of Fused-64CuCl2-PET/MRI (88%) was higher than 64CuCl2-PET/CT (82%), but the difference was not significant (p=0.25). In the patient-based analysis, the DRs of 64CuCl2-PET/MRI and mMRI were not significantly different (p=0.02). Interestingly, on considering PSA...

The bio-distribution of 64CuCl2 seems to be more favorable than that of 18F-Choline, as it is neither excreted nor accumulated in the urinary tract, while 18F-Choline is accumulated in the urinary bladder and the vesical activity could hide small accumulations of tracer next to it. This characteristic of 64CuCl2 enables a better assessment of the pelvis and prostatic bed; moreover, combining this feature with the precise spatial resolutionof mMRI imaging, an increased possibility of identifying small lesions close to the bladder or vesicourethral anastomosis isachieved....

A.Peirano and I.Verardo are Radiology Residents of the University of Genoa. F.Paparo and A.Piccardo are Medical Directors of the Galliera Hospital, Genoa.

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