3D TRUS Image Segmentation in Prostate Brachytherapy.

Brachytherapy is a minimally invasive interventional surgery used to treat prostate cancer. It is composed of three steps: dose pre-planning, implantation of radioactive seeds, and dose post-planning. In these procedures, it is crucial to determine the positions of needles and seeds, measure the volume of the prostate gland. Three-dimensional transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) imaging has been demonstrated to be a useful technique to perform such tasks. Compared to CT, MRI or X-ray imaging, US image suffers from low contrast, image speckle and shadows, making it challenging for segmentation of needles, the prostates and seeds in the 3D TRUS images. In this paper, we reviewed 3D TRUS image segmentation methods used in prostate brachytherapy including the segmentations of the needles, the prostate, as well as the seeds. Furthermore, some experimental results with agar phantom, turkey and chicken phantom, as well as the patient data are reported.