Compared to conventional imaging techniques, prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) PET imaging provides superior detection of bone metastases in prostate cancer patients, a critical indicator of a patient's long-term survival. Outcomes data revealed that patients with even just one bone metastasis experience faster disease progression and worse overall survival.
This research was presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2026 Annual Meeting.
Prostate cancer commonly spreads to bone, and for decades physicians have relied on bone scans and CT scans to detect this. These tools, however, have limitations, frequently missing small deposits of cancer that are already present and already changing a patient's prognosis.
Newer PSMA PET scans use a radioactive tracer that attaches directly to a protein on prostate cancer cells, making it far more sensitive than conventional imaging. As a result, PSMA PET has become the gold standard for staging prostate cancer at major cancer centers.
"We know that PSMA PET scans are effective in detecting bone metastases, but we don't have the data to show what that means in terms of overall outcomes," said Surekha Yadav, MBBS, resident in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco.
