Imaging

Imaging, segmentation, guidance and dosimetry for prostate brachytherapy

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With graduate students Xu Wen (co-supervised with P.D. Lawrence), Sara Badiei, Diego Pranantha (co-supervised with R. Rohling), and Nick Chng (co-supervised by Prof. Ingrid Spadinger who is the main supervisor). In collaboration with Dr. James Morris, Dr. I. Spadinger from the British Columbia Cancer Agency. Funded by NSERC, NSERC/CIHR CHRP program and by NIH.

Brachytherapy is a widely used treatment for localized prostate cancer and it consists of the ultrasound-guided trans-perineal insertion of radioactive sources or "seeds" into the prostate to kill cancerous tissue. The insertion is performed by a radiation oncologist who uses a guiding template to insert needles into the prostate and place the seeds. Typically 25 to 35 needles are inserted with 80 to 130 seeds, according to a plan designed by a medical physicist with the goal of delivering sufficient radiation to kill the cancerous tissue while sparing the urethra and rectum.

Our goals are:

to develop treatment planning and guidance tools based on conventional ultrasound imaging (e.g. segmentation for volume studies, [Badiei et al, 2006]) and vibro-elastography imaging ([Salcudean et al, 2006])
to find the distribution of seeds with respect to the prostate using ultrasound imaging (see, for example [Xu et al 2006]).