Abstract:

Low dose rate prostate brachytherapy is a non-surgical intervention used to treat low-risk localized cancer. It consists in implanting, definitively, radioactive sources which are able to eliminate cancer cells by local irradiation. Radioactive sources, also known as radioactive seeds, are injected into the prostate through flexible needles and guided by ultrasound imaging. Dynamic brachytherapy, also called adaptive, is an alternative to compensate for implantation errors due to the guidance modality and manual injections. The iterative aspect of dynamic brachytherapy is ensured by the automatic localization of radioactive sources in ultrasound images. The main objective of this thesis is to design and develop a solution to perform the automatic localization of radioactive seeds in 3D ultrasound images.

Knowing the positions of needles allows to focus the research treatment around their tips where the seeds are intended to be released. We started to develop a solution for the automatic needle localization in 3D ultrasound images. The construction of a reduced region of interest (ROI) allowed to overcome the difficulties associated to the poor quality of the ultrasound images and the small dimensions of the radioactive seeds.

 

Keywords :

Prostate cancer, dynamic brachytherapy, 3D ultrasound image, radioactive seeds localization