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Design of quality assurance for sonographic prostate brachytherapy needle guides
Albert Goldstein1, Mark Yudelev, Renu K Sharma
1Department of Radiology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Objective:
Needles are guided to their proper anatomic locations in sonographically guided percutaneous prostate brachytherapy by a mechanical system (template). A quality assurance procedure has been designed to test this template's alignment with the needle position overlay grid displayed in the sonographic image.
Methods:
A mechanical arrangement was designed to position the needles properly with respect to the prostate probe's transducer in a liquid-filled test tank. Two liquids were tested: tap water and an ethylene glycol mixture with an acoustic velocity of 1540 m/s. Needle images with the superposed grid were analyzed for needle placement accuracy.
Results:
The tap water produced misregistration of the needle images. The ethylene glycol mixture yielded images of vertical and horizontal needle positions accurate to 0.3 and 1 mm, respectively. Also, the importance of selecting the lowest possible equipment echo amplitude dynamic range in these tests was shown.
Conclusions:
This quality assurance test with the ethylene glycol mixture will permit accurate alignment of the brachytherapy needle position overlay grid for each separate transrectal probe used.