Faster Treatment Choices for Bowel-Cancer Patients Using Tumor-Imaging Analysis Technology

New imaging analysis technology helps hospitals make earlier and more accurate treatment decisions and survival assessments for patients with bowel cancer.

An innovative new medical imaging technology, TexRAD (Cambridge, UK), is an imaging risk stratification tool that analyses the texture of clinical diagnostic images for prognosis, risk, and treatment response. The tool analyses the texture of tumors, and has been shown in trials to enable early diagnosis of bowel-cancer patients not responding to the standard cancer therapy comparably better than other available tumor markers. Furthermore, the TexRAD markers showed the ability to evaluate at an early stage the probability of survival, differentiating patients who will have a good prognosis from those having poor prognosis.

Dr. Balaji Ganeshan, one of the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK) researchers whose research led to the development of the technology, said, “By using TexRAD to scan for subtle anomalies in a tumor’s texture, researchers have been able to spot more quickly when treatments are or are not working and adjust treatment accordingly. And because TexRAD simply provides an additional layer of software analysis of the MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and CT [computed tomography] scans that already exist as part of routine clinical practice, it is noninvasive from the patient’s point of view and potentially cost-effective to the healthcare provider.”

The technology is being evaluated in a number of research institutions and university hospitals worldwide. Across two separate UK studies, researchers analyzed the tumors of 155 bowel-cancer patients. In a study at University College London Hospitals (UK), researchers examined baseline PET [positron emission tomography]-CT scans, i.e., those taken before treatment, and then followed up with the patients for an average of three years later. They found that analyzing the texture of the tumors in the first scans enabled them to effectively predict patient survival.

At Colchester General Hospital (UK), the researchers searched through MR scans captured both before treatment and six weeks after the patients had completed chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and found that the patients whose tumors were less heterogeneous (more uniform) in terms of texture parameters six weeks after treatment were more likely to survive longer.

Furthermore, researchers from the University of Rome (Italy) revealed that texture analysis provides useful imaging biomarkers that indicate how the tumor is responding to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Andrea Laghi, a professor of radiology at the University of Rome, and lead investigator of the study, said, “The identification of new, accurate imaging biomarkers such as TexRAD analysis of MR images for early assessment of first-line cancer therapy response [predominantly to shrink the tumor before the main treatment] could be helpful in refining bowel-cancer patient management, providing a better targeting of preoperative therapy.”

The findings of the three studies will be presented to a wide international audience of radiologists, imaging scientists, healthcare providers, and industry at the 100th annual scientific meeting and exhibition of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), which will take place in Chicago (IL, USA), from November 30–December 5, 2014.

Related Links:
University of Sussex
University College London Hospitals
TexRAD