Quantitative radiology for staging and prognosis of patients with advanced prostatic carcinoma. Correlations with other pretreatment characteristics.

Quantitative radiology of metastases is compared with other pretreatment characteristics in ability to predict survival in 102 patients with advanced Stage IV prostatic carcinoma. Using only two films, the posteroanterior chest and pelvis, radiologic quantitation of metastases is more precise than the other pretreatment characteristics in separating high-risk and low-risk patients. Quantitative radiology is a simple, noninvasive, effective method of stratifying patients in clinical trials or before aggressive therapy. The comparative ability of quantitative radiology and quantitative bone scans to separate high-risk and low-risk patients with advanced prostatic carcinoma can now be assessed.