Ultrasound-only dosimetry for prostate brachytherapy: preliminary phantom results

Accurate and fast seed localization plays a key role in computing dosimetry for prostate brachytherapy. Because transrectal ultrasound is the primary imaging modality providing the guidance for prostate brachytherapy, an ultrasound-only approach for dosimetry would offer many benefits. In this paper, we propose an ultrasound only dosimetry solution, in which the brachytherapy seeds are located in reflected power images computed from ultrasonic radio frequency signals and the boundary of the prostate is delineated from B-mode TRUS and vibroelastography images as the prostate is stiffer than the surrounding tissue. The location of the implanted seeds relative to the prostate boundary is thus obtained. As only one imaging modality, ultrasound, is used, image registration is easy to implement. A prostate phantom with seeds embedded within it was built to evaluate the proposed approach. To measure the seed localization accuracy in the reflected power images, the phantom was scanned by CT as well. Experimental results show that the implanted seeds can be successfully located in the reflected power images with high contrast and accuracy, and that the contour of the "prostate" can be detected in the ultrasound vibro-elastography images outside the shadow of the seeds.