A novel shape similarity based elastography system for prostate cancer assessment

Prostate cancer is the second common cancer among men worldwide and remains the second leading cancer-related cause of death in mature men. The disease can be cured if it is detected at early stage. This implies that prostate cancer detection at early stage is very critical for desirable treatment outcome. Conventional techniques of prostate cancer screening and detection, such as Digital Rectal Examination (DRE), Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) and Trans Rectal Ultra-Sonography (TRUS), are known to have low sensitivity and specificity. Elastography is an imaging technique that uses tissue stiffness as contrast mechanism. As the association between the degree of prostate tissue stiffness alteration and its pathology is well established, elastography can potentially detect prostate cancer with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. In this paper, we present a novel elastography technique which, unlike other elastography techniques, does not require displacement data acquisition system. This technique requires the prostate's pre-compression and postcompression transrectal ultrasound images. The conceptual foundation of reconstructing the prostate's normal and pathological tissues elastic moduli is to determine these moduli such that the similarity between calculated and observed shape features of the post compression prostate image is maximized. Results indicate that this technique is highly accurate and robust.