Table 1.

a summary of clinical usage, advantages, and disadvantages across imaging modalities for PCa imaging.

IMAGING MODALITY	CLINICAL USAGE	ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES	FUTURE
Ultrasound-based	Initial detection and diagnosis	Office-based, widely available, inexpensive, real-time imaging	Limited tissue contrast between cancerous and benign tissue	mpUS-based approach (RTE, CEUS) may improve contrast
mpMRI-based	Initial diagnosis and recurrence, active surveillance, staging, metastatic involvement	Excellent tissue contrast for identification of clinically significant PCa	Expensive due to in-bore time, lack of real-time imaging, requires advanced training	Alternative in-bore options with realtime imaging being developed
mpMRI-ultrasound fusion-based	Initial detection and diagnosis, active surveillance	Office-based, combines multimodality information	Relatively costly, requires either fusion-device specific training or ample experience to perform cognitive fusion, registration errors during MRI-ultrasound fusion	Gaining popularity globally, but further improvements to minimize registration errors needed
PET-based	Staging, recurrence, metastatic spread	Offers ancillary information for tumor staging, characterization and metastatic involvement	Expensive, technological (e.g. attenuation correction) and/or clinical challenges (e.g. radiation exposure)	Development of specific radionuclides is an ongoing endeavor