Biopsym: a learning environment for trans-rectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsies

This paper describes a learning environment for image-guided prostate biopsies for cancer diagnosis; it is based on an ultrasound probe simulator virtually exploring real datasets obtained from patients. The aim is to make the training of young physicians easier and faster with a tool that combines lectures, biopsy simulations and recommended exercises to master this medical gesture. It is designed particularly to help improve the acquisition of the three-dimensional representation of the prostate required for practicing biopsy sequences. The simulator uses haptic feedback to compute the position of the virtual probe from three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound recorded data. This paper presents the current version of this learning environment.