To investigate the usefulness of a pharmacokinetic model based on dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MR imaging for the detection and localization of prostate cancer.

Forty-four patients that had undergone radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MR imaging (slice thickness, 4 mm; time resolution of each set, 5 seconds), were enrolled in the study. From the pharmacokinetic model, the time of arrival, and the parameters Ah, Kep, and Kel were extracted and were compared for cancerous tissue and non-cancerous tissue in the central gland and peripheral zone. The diagnostic performance of each parameter for differentiating cancerous tissue from non-cancerous tissue was evaluated using receiver-operating-characteristics analysis.

The Kep and Kel values were significantly greater in cancerous tissue (0.13 sec^-1 ± 0.14 and 1.59 × 10^-3 sec^-1 ± 1.35 × 10^-3) than in non-cancerous tissue from the central gland (0.03 sec^-1 ± 0.02 and 0.26 × 10^-3 sec^-1 ± 1.24 × 10^-3) and peripheral zone (0.04 sec^-1 ± 0.07 and 0.58 × 10^-3 sec^-1 ± 1.98 × 10^-3) (p < 0.05). The area under the ROC curve for differentiating cancerous from non-cancerous tissue was 0.850 (95% CI, 0.778-0.876) for Kep and 0.814 (95% CI, 0.737-0.876) for Kel.

Kep and Kel are useful perfusion parameters for the differentiation of prostate cancerous tissue from non-cancerous tissue.