3D Interactive Ultrasound Image Deformation for Realistic Prostate Biopsy Simulation

Realistic medical procedure simulators improve the learning curve of the clinicians if they can reproduce real conditions and use. This paper describes the improvement of a transrectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy simulator by adding the simulation of real-time prostate movements and deformations. A discrete bio-mechanical model is used to modify a 3D texture of an ultrasound image volume in order to quickly simulate the actual displacements and deformations. This paper describes this model and presents how the mesh deformation is used to induce the UltraSound volume deformation. The validation of the method is based on both a quantitative and a qualitative assessment. Experimental images acquired on a phantom are compared using mutual information metrics to the resulting generated images. This comparison shows that the proposed method offers realistic deformed 3D ultrasound images at interactive time. The method was successfully integrated to improve the transrectal ultrasound simulator.