Atlanta

New machine will help pinpoint danger areas for prostate cancer

By Craig Lucie
By Craig Lucie

ATLANTA — Piedmont Atlanta Hospital is now the first in Georgia to change the way doctors diagnose prostate cancer.

Thanks to a generous donation by one of their board members, the hospital just received a new machine that is capable of finding tiny lesions in the prostate, taking the guesswork out for doctors.

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“This is the first time have this technology in the state of Georgia,” said Dr. J. Maxwell White, of Piedmont Atlanta.

It’s called Uronav. Think of it as a GPS system similar to the one in a car. It uses electromagnetic tracking and fuses MRI imaging and ultrasound images to pinpoint exactly where a suspicious lesion may be.

“This allows us to take patients that we suspect of having prostate cancer that have failed to have detection on this unit, and then we add this technology to this unit to make it more precise and have fewer biopsies,” White told Channel 2's Craig Lucie.

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Uronav creates a three-dimensional image to pinpoint where doctors need to take a biopsy. White says this is a game changer.

“It allows us to rotate the picture and find the area of interest and biopsy only the area marked as highly suspicious,” White said.

White told Lucie in many cases with his patients, you couldn’t even see the cancer on an ultrasound.%

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“(One patient) indeed had prostate cancer in (one) spot, but nothing was detected in the rectal examination,” White said.

That may no longer be the case with this technology.

“This is a major advance in terms of detection. It doesn’t tell us more about treatment, but it helps with the early detection of people who need to be treated as opposed to being monitored,” White said.

An individual donor covered the $180,000 cost. A representative from Uronav told Channel 2 Action News that other hospitals in the metro area may have the technology soon as well.

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