TY - JOUR
T1 - Contrast-Specific Spherical Lesion Phantoms and Ancillary Analysis Software for the Objective Evaluation of Transrectal Ultrasound System Contrast Detectability
AU - Doyle, Andrea Jane
AU - Cody, Dervil
AU - Knight, Silvin
AU - King, Deirdre M.
AU - Sullivan, Francis J.
AU - Browne, Jacinta E.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - Brachytherapy is an efficacious treatment option because of its benefits for patient recovery, dose localization and conformity, but these favorable outcomes can be ensured only if the transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) system is optimized for the specific application of ultrasound-guided prostate brachytherapy. The ability to delineate the prostate from surrounding tissue during TRUS-guided prostate brachytherapy is vital for treatment planning, and consequently, so is the contrast resolution. This study describes the development of task-specific contrast-detail phantoms with clinically relevant contrast and spherical target sizes for contrast-detail performance evaluation of TRUS systems used in the brachytherapy procedure. The procedure for objective assessment of the contrast detectability of the TRUS systems is also described; a program was developed in MATLAB (R2017a, The MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA) to quantitatively analyze image quality in terms of the lesion signal-to-noise ratio (LSNR) and validated with representative control test images. The LSNR of the Hitachi EUB-7500A (2013, Hitachi, Ltd, Tokyo, Japan) TRUS system was measured on sagittal and transverse TRUS images of the contrast-detail phantoms described in this work. Results revealed the efficacy of the device as an image quality evaluation tool and the impact of the size, depth and relative contrast of the targets to the surrounding tissue on the contrast detectability of a TRUS system for both transducer arrays. The MATLAB program objectively measured the contrast detectability of the TRUS system and has the potential to determine optimized imaging parameters that could be designed as part of standardization of the imaging protocol used in TRUS-guided prostate brachytherapy for prostate cancer.
AB - Brachytherapy is an efficacious treatment option because of its benefits for patient recovery, dose localization and conformity, but these favorable outcomes can be ensured only if the transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) system is optimized for the specific application of ultrasound-guided prostate brachytherapy. The ability to delineate the prostate from surrounding tissue during TRUS-guided prostate brachytherapy is vital for treatment planning, and consequently, so is the contrast resolution. This study describes the development of task-specific contrast-detail phantoms with clinically relevant contrast and spherical target sizes for contrast-detail performance evaluation of TRUS systems used in the brachytherapy procedure. The procedure for objective assessment of the contrast detectability of the TRUS systems is also described; a program was developed in MATLAB (R2017a, The MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA) to quantitatively analyze image quality in terms of the lesion signal-to-noise ratio (LSNR) and validated with representative control test images. The LSNR of the Hitachi EUB-7500A (2013, Hitachi, Ltd, Tokyo, Japan) TRUS system was measured on sagittal and transverse TRUS images of the contrast-detail phantoms described in this work. Results revealed the efficacy of the device as an image quality evaluation tool and the impact of the size, depth and relative contrast of the targets to the surrounding tissue on the contrast detectability of a TRUS system for both transducer arrays. The MATLAB program objectively measured the contrast detectability of the TRUS system and has the potential to determine optimized imaging parameters that could be designed as part of standardization of the imaging protocol used in TRUS-guided prostate brachytherapy for prostate cancer.
KW - Contrast-detail phantom
KW - Lesion signal-to-noise ratio
KW - Objective image analysis
KW - Transrectal ultrasound
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132363127&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2022.04.007
DO - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2022.04.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 35659496
AN - SCOPUS:85132363127
SN - 0301-5629
VL - 48
SP - 1615
EP - 1627
JO - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
JF - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
IS - 8
ER -