Prior art ideas. Left: Schematically shown geometry of full prostate imaging with an outside
limited field of view imaging detector placed in front of the patient torso and an endorectal
probe placed behind and in close proximity to the prostate gland [Mos05]. Right: Closer
side view of the two imagers shown here with some anatomy details. Outside detector is of a
small field of view and is placed very close to the pelvis area. Many examples of coincidence
line of response are shown as yellow lines [Lev05].
Comment (SM): this geometry is unrealistic.
More realistic scenario with a small size PET sensor operating with a TRUS ultrasound
probe to guide biopsy of prostate.
Schematic of one of the preferred versions of the dedicated biopsy/surgery guidance PET
imager. (The organ and the probe are not up to scale, and the drawing should be treated as
just a sketch presenting concept.) The dedicated prostate imager is made of individual
(sixteen in this example) external PET detector modules divided into two sectors: top and
bottom, placed on an approximately cylindrical surface, and the internal small-size PET
probe. The small-size PET probe is placed in an insert-shell placed endorectally under the
prostate. Small size of the probe permits that at any position of the probe, only a fraction of
the lines of response of back to back coincident 511 keV annihilation gamma ray pairs
between the front external detector modules and the probe, is recorded. The PET probe has
an associated ultrasound probe that monitors and records positioning of the PET probe
relative to the prostate. The ultrasound probe (not shown) can be either a part of the PET
probe or be a separate device inserted after or before the PET probe is used.
The PET probe can be also used in conjunction with the standard PET imager [Cli05] or
flat panel module placed in front of the patient [Mos05], [Lev05].
References:
[Cli05] Neal Clinthorne, Promise of the Compton prostate probe, recent results and
beyond, presented at the Topical Symposium on Advanced Molecular Imaging
Techniques in the Detection, Diagnosis, Therapy, and Follow-Up of Prostate
Cancer,6-7
December
2005,
Rome,
Italy,
http://www.iss.infn.it/congresso/prostate/presentations_author.htm.
[Lev05] C. Levin, New Photon Sensor Technologies for PET in Prostate-Specific
Imaging Configurations, presented at the Topical Symposium on Advanced
Molecular Imaging Techniques in the Detection, Diagnosis, Therapy, and FollowUp of
Prostate Cancer,
6-7 December 2005, Rome,
Italy,
http://www.iss.infn.it/congresso/prostate/presentations_author.htm.
[Mos05] W. Moses, Dedicated PET Instrumentation for prostate imaging, presented at
the Topical Symposium on Advanced Molecular Imaging Techniques in the
Detection, Diagnosis, Therapy, and Follow-Up of Prostate Cancer, 6-7 December
2005,
Rome,
Italy,
http://www.iss.infn.it/congresso/prostate/presentations_author.htm.