Flemming Forsberg
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American men, yet many of the cancers found by PSA blood screening are slow-growing and do not need aggressive treatment. Doctors need a way to find the cancers that matter.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
prostate cancer
PCa
ultrasound imaging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Implement multiparametric ultrasound, combining contrast-enhanced, subharmonic, dispersion and viscoelastography imaging, on a commercial 3D transrectal probe, and adapt an MRI-based fusion and registration system for it.
- Optimize mp-US detection of clinically significant prostate cancer with machine learning, using pathology from 50 radical prostatectomy patients as ground truth.
- Test in a 300-patient clinical trial whether mp-US-targeted biopsy is non-inferior to mp-MRI-targeted biopsy for detecting clinically significant prostate cancer, with systematic 12-core biopsy as a reference.
More about the research
Multiparametric MRI (mp-MRI) is the current standard for spotting aggressive tumors and guiding biopsies. However, it misses some important lesions, is expensive, is not available everywhere, and uses gadolinium contrast, which can be risky for patients with weak kidneys. This project develops ultrasound, a cheaper and more widely available tool, as an alternative.
Why it matters
A 3D ultrasound system that matches MRI at guiding biopsies could give men with suspected prostate cancer a cheaper, more widely available, gadolinium-free way to detect aggressive tumors. This may help reduce overtreatment of slow-growing cancers and help patients where MRI is scarce. It could also help patients with kidney problems. The project aims to deliver a system ready for clinical deployment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kourosh Kalayeh
University of Michigan, MI·Biomedical Engineering
Establish normal dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound (DCEUS) kidney blood-flow values in healthy volunteers, accounting for biological sex and left versus right kidney.
Haichong Zhang
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop multiparametric photoacoustic imaging that simultaneously quantifies a PSMA-targeted contrast agent and blood oxygen saturation, to identify abnormal prostate tissue and gauge cancer aggressiveness.
Michael Liss
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Validate whether restricted signal map values from RSI-MRI, a diffusion MRI method sensitive to water trapped in cancer cells, identify clinically significant prostate cancer, comparing PI-RADS scores with and without RSM in a single-arm clinical trial.
The school
Thomas Jefferson University: 12 labs on PI Pages, $271M a year on research, 33 research doctorates a year.
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