Jjmch. Delarosette et al., AUTOMATED-ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF TRANSRECTAL ULTRASONOGRAPHY IMAGES IN PATIENTS WITH PROSTATITIS, European urology, 27(1), 1995, pp. 47-53
Transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) offers a valuable complement to digital
rectal examination (DRE) in diagnosing prostate diseases. However, in
case of prostatitis syndromes, contradictions are found with regard to
characteristic ultrasound features in these patients. Therefore we so
ught for better imaging techniques. This paper describes a study on th
e automated analysis of ultrasonographic prostate images (AUDEX). With
image processing, in the present study, tissue characterization is pe
rformed to predict the probability of the presence of inflammated pros
tate tissue. This technique already proved its validity in patients wi
th prostate cancer. During prostate examinations, images were recorded
with clear indication of the puncture position. Only patients with an
unambiguously inflamed or noninflamed benign histologic result were i
ncluded. Evaluation showed that a sensitivity of 90.6% and a specifici
ty of 64.2% was reached. Finally, the prospective positive and negativ
e predictive value for prostatitis was 50.0% and 94.6%, respectively.
This means that AUDEX predicts the diagnosis 'prostatitis' in a large
number of patients with no infection. In case of prostatitis, however,
this prediction is almost always right.