ldog said...
And a lot has to do with the person(s) reading the scans. My uro showed me the readings/scans, even he said that he had really no idea what we were looking at. I could not tell what the heck was going on, but sure enough, the MRI didn't lie.
You raise an important point. Studies that involve MRI readings usually have the same single radiologist or set of radiologists doing the readings for consistency purposes. When I worked in the data side of cancer trials (not prostate, however), the main parameter tracked was the size of a set of lesions (chosen at the start of the study) as measured at our study site (a univ. hospital)
by the same two or three experienced radiologists with specific training in a rigid research standard of (CT) evaluation. In addition to this, the scans were often sent to the study sponsor for a second, centralized reading. Whether patients stayed on the study medication was essentially determined by these readings, not unlike biopsy slide rereads.
From what I gather, mpMRI readings are much more difficult, because in addition to size, PCa lesions have to be scored on the PIRADS scale. This is why we sometimes see a 2nd read of an MRI drawing different conclusions for a Forum brother.
Djin