Modeling and mapping of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers for men. Biopsy of the pr ostate is carried out following protocols that designate locations and numb er of needles for tissue sampling as prostate cancer mostly does not show u p in the ultrasound images ol other modalities. Current protocols for prost ate biopsy, however, were created largely based on qualitative clinical exp eriences and pathological data. They are thus sub-optimal in terms of rate of cancer detection. In fact, the most commonly used protocol (the sextant biopsy) has only about a 30% rate of cancer detection. This leads to more f requent repeat biopsies and potentially runs the risk of not detecting a si gnificant cancer in early stage. In this paper, we aim at improving the per formance of prostate needle biopsy by modeling and mapping prostate cancer using real prostate: specimens. Surface models of the prostate are reconstr ucted using deformable modeling techniques. A 3D visualization system is de veloped to simulate the process of prostate needle biopsy. A 3D distributio n map of prostate cancer is built and used to develop optimal biopsy protoc ols. The 3D map can later be superimposed to online ultrasound images to gu ide biopsy process of real patients. Experimental results are also provided . (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.