Development and evaluation of optimal prostate biopsy protocols for individual groups of patients

Abstract We have developed a number of optimal biopsy protocols for the detection of prostate cancer for both general and specific groups of patients. Age, race and prostate volume were considered in the development and optimal protocols were developed for individual patients based on these factors. Experimental results showed that optimal 6-needle protocols outperformed traditional sextant protocol for all age, race and prostate volume groups of patients, and the difference is statistically significant. We did not find significant improvements for developing protocols for age-specific, race-specific or prostate volume-specific patients in this preliminary study. Our results also indicated that more biopsy cores should be used in older men to achieve a targeted detection rate.