Giving all men with suspected prostate cancer an immediate MRI scan would save thousands of lives a year, the results of a new study suggest.

A trial by British scientists found the comprehensive scan was 12 per cent more likely to detect dangerous tumours than the traditional biopsy, and that the number of men who undergo a biopsy needlessly could be reduced by 28 per cent.

Every year more than 120,000 men in the UK undergo a biopsy, which involves inserting an ultrasound probe into the affected area to take a sample of cells from the prostate that might contain cancer.

The team at University College London believe that with the new strategy more than a quarter of the one million men who currently undergo a biopsy across Europe every year could "safely avoid it".

The trial, presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Copenhagen, with publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, saw researchers from 23 centres randomly allocate 500 men with suspected prostate cancer to be examined either with a standard biopsy or with an initial MRI scan followed by a targeted biopsy if the MRI showed an abnormality.