Development of a virtual needle biopsy simulation system for the virtual prostate

This paper discusses the virtual prostate needle biopsy system and the construction of the virtual prostate model, considering the actual distribution of prostate abnormalities. A needle biopsy simulation is performed for the constructed virtual prostate, and the actual biopsy procedure in the clinical situation is evaluated. The prostate needle biopsy is a histologic diagnosis procedure in which a sample is acquired from the prostate tissue by needle biopsy and is inspected under a microscope. In order to achieve reliable prostate needle biopsy, it is necessary to consider systematically and numerically the number of needles required, and their locations and insertion angles. For such a purpose, a system is developed in which a virtual prostate is constructed on a computer and the biopsy procedure is evaluated quantitatively by performing virtually the prostate needle biopsy. Furthermore, two different models are constructed, for the prostate with and without hypertrophy, based on the actual statistical distribution data for prostate abnormalities. Each model is partitioned into the peripheral zone and the transition zone. The constructed virtual prostate is input into the virtual needle biopsy simulation system, and three different systematic biopsy procedures actually used at clinical sites, and four different needle biopsy procedures, are experimentally evaluated. The experiments show that the insertion angle that maximizes the hit probability is not always the same as the insertion angle that maximizes cancer sample acquisition. It is evident that the proposed method can indicate a biopsy procedure which realizes a high hit probability with a small number of needles. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 37(1): 93–104, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.20181