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

BackgroundEarly 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 MethodsA 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. ResultsExperimental 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. ConclusionsThis system can be applied to detect hard materials such as tumor and malignant tissue. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.