A technique for prostate registration by finite element modeling

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) targeted and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) guided needle biopsy is currently the clinical standard routine for diagnosis of prostate cancer. The prostate under TRUS procedure possesses different orientation and shape from its presentation in MRI procedure. Therefore, registration of suspicious tumor sites identified in the MRI images to that of TRUS images is an essential process to ascertain the needling targets during the TRUS procedure. In this paper, an effective technique is proposed to directly transform the prostate geometries from MRI volume to TRUS volume, based on finite element (FE) method and biomechanical models. Both the procedure and the accuracy of this registration method were studied through 2D transformation of prostate axial cross-section. The overall target errors can be reduces to less than 1 mm even for a large deformed prostate.