Robotic system with sweeping palpation and needle biopsy for prostate cancer diagnosis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis of prostate cancers can be of major benefit to patients because, combined with proper treatments, it can increase the survival rate of patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A new device is described that can be used to increase diagnostic accuracy and decrease complications during the examination of prostate diseases. This device is designed to perform a palpation examination and needle biopsy together on prostate tissue. Ex-vivo experiments were conducted on human prostate and tissue phantoms. RESULTS: Experimental results show that the device can be used to localize hard tissues. To remove experimental artifacts, a procedure is suggested to identify the abnormal tissue regions using FEM-based-mechanical-property-characterization and the abnormal regions obtained by analysis were compared with information from pathology. These results show a high specificity (81.8%) and PPV (60.0%) for the detection of prostate cancer. CONCLUSIONS: This system can be applied to detect hard materials such as tumor and malignant tissue.