A new imaging technology has claimed to figure out a hidden tumor by measuring the chemical composition of a tissue.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy gave good results in trials. The results of these trials were compared with the results of current technique being used.

Leo L. Cheng, an assistant professor of radiology and pathology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, "We see a good correlation with pathology defined by those methods."

Dangerous hidden tumors can not be figured out by the current diagnostic techniques. Doctors using the current technique often miss out a deadly portion of cancer that is life threatening.

Cheng and his colleagues in 2005 figured out that magnetic resonance spectroscopy could mark a difference between cancerous from normal prostate tissue by their metabolic profiles.

Cheng on five cancerous prostate glands used magnetic resonance spectroscopy removed from men with the diagnosis. The results were then compared with those of the standard technique. It was found that on a magnetic resonance spectroscopy malignancy index five of seven regions scored high that were identified as cancerous by that method.

Prostate cancer is killing about 254, 000 men every year.