Magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) of the prostate has become an essential tool in diagnosing prostate cancer. The mpMRI exam is currently used in men who are suspected of having clinically significant disease and can reduce the number of men who need a prostate biopsy, reduce the number of diagnoses of clinically insignificant cancers, and improve the detection and localization of significant cancer. However, there can be variations in interpretation due to the expertise of the radiologist. An efficient MRI-pathway can benefit from further optimized imaging, and a decrease in the number of diagnostic steps to identify clinically significant cancer, to match an increasing demand for mpMRI in prostate cancer diagnostics. This thesis has covered several studies to optimize technical aspects of MRI of the prostate, aiming to facilitate the quantitative assessment of the aggressiveness of prostate cancer and the spread of the disease to lymph nodes.
Carlijn Tenbergen (1992) obtained her Master’s degree in Technical Medicine at the University of Twente, Enschede, in 2017. She started her PhD research in 2018, at the BioMR group of the Medical Imaging department of the Radboudumc. Currently Carlijn is working at the Princess Máxima Center for child oncology as a local datamanager within the Trial and Data center.