# Artificial Intelligence Across the Prostate Cancer Pathway: Screening, Imaging, Pathology, and Biomarkers

**Authors:** Muhammad Rakib Hasan, Nazeer Ibraheem, Mohammad Ekhlasur Rahman, Rezuana Tamanna

PMC · DOI: 10.7759/cureus.96226 · Cureus · 2025-11-06

## TL;DR

AI is transforming prostate cancer care by improving screening, imaging, pathology, and biomarker analysis, offering more accurate and efficient tools for diagnosis and treatment.

## Contribution

The paper presents a comprehensive overview of AI applications across the prostate cancer pathway, highlighting novel multimodal and noninvasive approaches.

## Key findings

- AI in micro-US and MRI-TRUS improves diagnostic specificity without sacrificing sensitivity.
- Liquid-biopsy programs using AI enable noninvasive risk stratification and clinical feasibility.
- AI in pathology reduces reading time and supports integrative prognostic models.

## Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made great changes to prostate cancer screening and early detection across biomarkers, imaging, and pathology. On micro-ultrasound (micro-US), AI improves discrimination and raises specificity at comparable sensitivity versus clinical models, while multimodal magnetic resonance imaging-transrectal US (MRI-TRUS) AI achieves higher specificity at matched sensitivity. Liquid-biopsy programs combine fragmentomics with ctDNA and cell-free mRNA interpreted by AI, enabling noninvasive risk stratification and clinical feasibility. In imaging, AI for MRI matches or exceeds expert radiologists in large reader studies and MRI benchmarks; commercial tools show robust patient- and lesion-level performance. Quantitative pipelines (e.g., automated tissue-composition metrics) aid equivocal Prostate Imaging-Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS 3) lesions with PSA density, and AI-derived intraprostatic tumor volume offers independent prognostic value. Multimodal fusion of MRI with TRUS boosts detection, and automated prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) PET/CT algorithms quantify tumor burden and support longitudinal response tracking. In pathology, clinical-grade AI automates cancer detection and Gleason grading, cutting reading time, ancillary tests, and second-opinion requests, while supporting integrative prognostic models. Downstream, AI accelerates radiotherapy planning, guides focal therapies and surgical margins, personalizes systemic therapy, and enables early post-treatment monitoring. Translation still requires rigorous, prospective, multi-site validation.

## Linked entities

- **Diseases:** prostate cancer (MONDO:0005159)

## Full-text entities

- **Genes:** NPEPPS (aminopeptidase puromycin sensitive) [NCBI Gene 9520] {aka AAP-S, MP100, PSA}, FOLH1 (folate hydrolase 1) [NCBI Gene 2346] {aka FGCP, FOLH, GCP2, GCPII, NAALAD1, PSM}
- **Diseases:** cancer (MESH:D009369), Prostate Cancer (MESH:D011471)
- **Species:** Homo sapiens (human, species) [taxon 9606]

## Full text

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## Figures

2 figures with captions in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12591259/full.md

## References

70 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12591259/full.md

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12591259