Simplified VERDICT diffusion imaging and modelling for efficient characterisation of prostate cancer

Motivation: VERDICT diffusion imaging and modelling for prostate cancer characterisation requires significant scan time which hinders its clinical practicality. Goal(s): We aim to reduce the scan time requirement of VERDICT through paired model simplification and acquisition reduction whilst retaining model fitting accuracy and diagnostic performance. Approach: We evaluated the model fitting accuracy and diagnostic performance of three simplified VERDICT schemes on 97 patients who underwent targeted biopsy. Results: Our results demonstrate that a scan time reduction of ≈30% can be achieved with minimal impact to performance; model parameters were recovered with <5% mean bias and no significant change in diagnostic performance was observed. Impact: Reducing the scan time of VERDICT diffusion imaging could help to enable integration of VERDICT into clinical practice which could help to reduce the number of healthy men referred for biopsy.