Lucida

AI powered software improving prostate cancer diagnosis.

Problem 

NHS Trusts face a number of challenges in their prostate cancer pathway. This includes: 

• A need to reduce waiting times in the prostate cancer pathway 

• Challenges with meeting the 28-day Faster Diagnostic Standard of time between referral and diagnosis 

• A need to optimise the reporting workflow given the increase in prostate MRI exams 

• Challenge with identifying high risk patients and prioritising them through the pathway 

• Too many men are being referred for a biopsy 

For trusts, this can result in failure to achieve the 28 day faster diagnosis standard. 

Increased waiting time in the pathway has a negative impact on patients, which can result in: 

• delayed cancer diagnosis  

• delayed commencement of treatment  

• increased anxiety whilst awaiting diagnosis or awaiting treatment 

Solution 

Lucida Medical uses PI™ (Prostate Intelligence), an artificially intelligence solution. 

Pi™  supports the prostate diagnosis pathway by interpreting prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), automatically risk stratifying each patient based on the likelihood of clinically significant prostate cancer and producing automated visual outputs and calculations to support clinical workflows.  

Pi™ can be used to support the diagnosis pathway in different ways:  

• To automatically book high-risk patients for the next available biopsy at a pre-determined Pi score threshold (bypassing MRI reporting and administration)  

• To enable radiologists to prioritise patients at greatest risk of prostate cancer when reporting MRI results, and providing a ‘second read’ for clearer negative cases (previously done by a second radiologist)  

• To produce 3D heatmap images and calculate the prostate volume to support biopsy decisions and procedures.  

Impact 

The main benefits of Pi™ are: 

Benefits for patients 

• Enables earlier diagnosis of clinically significant cancer, helping improve patient outcomes. 

• Improves accuracy when referring patients for biopsy and supports more precise prostate biopsies. 

Benefits for radiologists 

• Supports meeting the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard from referral to diagnosis or ruling out cancer. 

• May reduce unnecessary biopsies by up to 20%, saving around £139 per patient over their lifetime. 

• Reduces reliance on outsourced teleradiology, helping lower costs. 

• Enables faster triage of high-risk patients and quicker reporting of normal prostate MRIs. 

• Improves diagnostic accuracy for less experienced radiologists and registrars. 

Benefits for urologists 

• Accurate lesion contouring and prostate segmentation may enable nurse-led biopsy services, expanding capacity and helping address resource constraints. 

• Improves the accuracy and precision of biopsy procedures by overlaying AI outputs onto MRI scans, allowing better targeting of lesions. 

• Particularly useful for detecting prostate cancer in harder-to-diagnose areas, such as the anterior zone. 

Find out more about Lucida Medical on their website