Contrast-Specific Spherical Lesion Phantoms and Ancillary Analysis Software for the Objective Evaluation of...

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Oncology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Brachytherapy offers significant patient recovery benefits, but requires optimized transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) systems for accurate prostate cancer treatment.
• Effective prostate delineation during TRUS-guided brachytherapy relies heavily on high contrast resolution for precise treatment planning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop task-specific contrast-detail phantoms for evaluating TRUS system performance in brachytherapy.
• To establish an objective method for assessing TRUS contrast detectability using a MATLAB-based program and lesion signal-to-noise ratio (LSNR).

Main Methods:

• Designed contrast-detail phantoms with clinically relevant contrast and spherical targets for TRUS system evaluation.
• Developed and validated a MATLAB program to quantitatively analyze image quality via LSNR.
• Measured LSNR on a Hitachi EUB-7500A TRUS system using the developed phantoms.

Main Results:

• The developed phantoms and MATLAB program effectively evaluated TRUS image quality.
• Target size, depth, and contrast significantly impact TRUS system contrast detectability.
• The study demonstrated the impact of imaging parameters on contrast detectability for both transducer arrays.

Conclusions:

• The developed phantom and LSNR analysis provide an effective tool for TRUS system image quality evaluation.
• This methodology can help standardize imaging protocols for TRUS-guided prostate brachytherapy.
• Optimized imaging parameters derived from this method can enhance prostate cancer treatment outcomes.