Target Motion Tracking in MRI-guided Transrectal Robotic Prostate Biopsy

Purpose: MRI-guided prostate needle biopsy requires compensation for organ motion between target planning and needle placement. Two questions are studied and answered in this paper: 1) is rigid registration sufficient in tracking the targets with an error smaller than the clinically significant size of prostate cancer and 2) what is the effect of the number of intraoperative slices on registration accuracy and speed? Methods: we propose multislice-to-volume registration algorithms for tracking the biopsy targets within the prostate. Three orthogonal plus additional transverse intraoperative slices are acquired in the approximate center of the prostate and registered with a high-resolution target planning volume. Both rigid and deformable scenarios were implemented. Both simulated and clinical MRI-guided robotic prostate biopsy data were used to assess tracking accuracy. Results: average registration errors in clinical patient data were 2.6 mm for the rigid algorithm and 2.1 mm for the deformable algorithm. Conclusion: rigid tracking appears to be promising. Three tracking slices yield significantly high registration speed with an affordable error.