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.

Written by:
Ahn B, Lee H, Kim Y, Kim J.   Are you the author?
Wellness Technology R&D Group, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, 143 Hanggaul-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 426-910, Korea.

Reference: Int J Med Robot. 2013 Oct 30. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1002/rcs.1543


PubMed Abstract
PMID: 24170422

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