Charity trustees have donated £20,000 to aid the early detection of prostate cancer at a specialist cancer centre.

James Stirling, a research fellow at Paul Strickland Scanner Centre in Northwood , was given the donation by Herts Against Cancer (HAC) to fund the study into recurrent prostate cancer.

On behalf of the HAC trustees, Sue Harkness said: “Our fundraising supports initiatives to improve early detection of cancers in Hertfordshire.

“We felt that Paul Strickland Scanner Centre’s work with early cancer diagnosis, monitoring and research fitted our aims as a charity.

“We could clearly see the impact our donation would make to the lives of patients with cancer.”

The majority of the fund was raised at HAC charity shop Raindrops on Roses, in St Albans, as well as from donations from individuals and groups.

The Paul Strickland Scanner Centre, founded in 1985 by the late Dr Paul Strickland, is based at Mount Vernon Hospital, a specialist cancer centre in Rickmansworth Road, Northwood.

The charity provides state-of-the-art scanning services for the early diagnosis, monitoring and research of cancer and other life-limiting diseases.

Its scans provide clinicians with vital information, influencing treatment and monitoring effectiveness.

The centre receives no government funding for its scanners and to date HAC have donated £55,000 to it.

The first donation of £15,000 went towards funding a £1.4million PET-CT scanner, which has already benefited hundreds of patients since it was bought in September.

The PET scans help guide radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments and offers the potential for lower dose, higher image quality and faster scanning for improved patient comfort. A second donation from HAC of £20,000 was used to purchase MRI software designed to aid cancer diagnoses.