Guiding Prostate Cancer Biopsies using Time Resolved 3D Fluorescence Tomography Combined with Ultrasound Imaging

With the emergence of photonics, new technologies and fast computed methods, optical imaging becomes a promising tool for medical applications. We focus here our interest on prostate cancer which is the most common one in the male population and which suffers from a lack of clinical imaging techniques. Hence, the current approach to localize tumors inside the organ relies on an excessive use of biopsies to sample the prostate until reaching the suspicious region. This process is obviously invasive for the patients and requires often to be repeated. Some methods based on diffuse optics tomography give encouraging results [1] but still require an acquisition duration not compatible with a clinical intervention. For faster localization of the tumor, we propose to use time resolved fluorescent tomography preceded by an injection of a fluorescent marker to the patient. The goal of our approach is to perform a single biopsy, by guiding it towards the identified fluorescent region. The detection is coupled with ultrasound imaging which is a current and convenient technique in interventional radiology.