Prostate cancer affects 1 in 6 men in the USA. Systematic transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-guided biopsy is the standard method for a definitive diagnosis of prostate cancer. However, this "blind" biopsy approach can miss at least 20% of prostate cancers. In this study, we are developing a PET/CT directed, 3D ultrasound image-guided biopsy system for improved detection of prostate cancer. In order to plan biopsy in three dimensions, we developed an automatic segmentation method based wavelet transform for 3D TRUS images of the prostate. The segmentation was tested in five patients with a DICE overlap ratio of more than 91%. In order to incorporate PET/CT images into ultrasound-guided biopsy, we developed a nonrigid registration algorithm for TRUS and PET/CT images. The registration method has been tested in a prostate phantom with a target registration error (TRE) of less than 0.4 mm. The segmentation and registration methods are two key components of the multimodality molecular image-guided biopsy system.
Keywords: 3D ultrasound imaging; Molecular imaging; PET/CT; image segmentation; image-guided biopsy; nonrigid image registration; prostate cancer; wavelet transform.