• Prenuvo scans detected cancer in 2.2% of mostly asymptomatic patients - including types that standard screening methods often miss.
• With a 99.8% negative predictive value, the scans provided high confidence in ruling out cancer when no findings were detected.
• The study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting as a peer-reviewed presentation, highlighting its importance to clinical practice.
  
   

Prenuvo, a leader in whole-body MRI for proactive health screening, today announced the results of Polaris, a real-world study of more than 1,000 people with no specific symptoms who underwent whole-body MRI scans. The study, accepted and presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2025, offers new evidence that whole-body MRI can detect critical conditions missed by today's standard screening guidelines. 

Among the 1,011 mostly asymptomatic patients studied, 2.2% were diagnosed with biopsy-proven cancers, including types often missed with single-cancer screening tests. These included kidney, bladder, and ovarian cancers, which are often detected after symptoms arise, making treatment less effective. The Polaris study detected most cancers early, when treatment is more effective.  

“The Polaris findings represent a highly promising early milestone towards validating an imaging-based multi-cancer detection strategy using Prenuvo’s whole-body MRI screening,” said Dr. Yosef Chodakiewitz, Medical Director of Primary Care Radiology at Prenuvo and Chief Radiologist for the Hercules Project. “We are enabling screening-based detection of cancers that traditional single-cancer screening methods often overlook—allowing for earlier detection and targeted management at stages when treatment can be far more effective.”

The study cohort included proactive adults who underwent preventive whole-body MRI, offering insight into how this technology performs in a real-world clinical setting. Researchers conducted the study at a single clinic in Canada, and they are now conducting follow-up research to evaluate the findings across a broader and more diverse population.

High yield for cancer-detection and other clinically significant conditions  

The scans also provided meaningful reassurance: 99.8% of patients with a clear scan stayed cancer-free for at least a year. In cases which led to diagnostically-motivated biopsies, about half of those were biopsy-proven as cancer. Beyond cancer detection, the Prenuvo scans also identified a range of other clinically significant conditions requiring medical attention, including aneurysms, non-cancerous brain masses causing intracranial mass effect, metabolic disorders, and more. These observations highlight the broad potential of this technology to detect a wide spectrum of clinically relevant conditions in a single, high-yield whole-body MRI screening session.  

Prenuvo emphasizes that whole-body MRI is intended to complement, not replace, existing targeted screening methods. For example, the small number of cancers not detected in the study—fewer than 0.2% of cases—were breast cancers, for which Prenuvo continues to recommend regular mammography.

"No single test is perfect, but when strategically employed as complementary instruments, whole-body MRI and traditional single-cancer screening methods may synergistically enhance our ability to detect disease early—potentially creating better opportunities for less invasive curative treatments, disease-modifying interventions, or even altering the natural history of disease through behavioral or lifestyle risk-factor management,” Dr. Yosef Chodakiewitz continues. 

Prenuvo is one year into Hercules, a large observational study longitudinally following up to 100,000 people to better understand how whole-body MRI can improve early detection, long-term health outcomes, and access to care. Researchers will be piloting new risk-stratifying reporting systems to help medical professionals interpret results more clearly, identifying findings that require action and monitoring those that do not. These tools include ONCO-RADS (for assessing cancer risk) and a new Clinically Significant Diagnoses (CSD) system (for evaluating the clinical importance of other conditions). The Polaris study continues as part of this effort and will expand as researchers gather more data through Hercules.