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Design of Quality Assurance for Sonographic Prostate Brachytherapy Needle Guides
Author(s) -
Goldstein Albert,
Yudelev Mark,
Sharma Renu K.,
Arterbery Elayne
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of ultrasound in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1550-9613
pISSN - 0278-4297
DOI - 10.7863/jum.2002.21.9.947
Subject(s) - quality assurance , medicine , brachytherapy , prostate , prostate brachytherapy , percutaneous , biomedical engineering , overlay , ethylene glycol , nuclear medicine , transducer , grid , medical physics , radiology , acoustics , computer science , radiation therapy , geology , engineering , pathology , physics , external quality assessment , geodesy , cancer , chemical engineering , programming language
Objective. Needles are guided to their proper anatomic locations in sonographically guided percutaneous prostate brachytherapy by a mechanical system (template). A quality assurance procedure has been designed to test this template's alignment with the needle position overlay grid displayed in the sonographic image. Methods. A mechanical arrangement was designed to position the needles properly with respect to the prostate probe's transducer in a liquid‐filled test tank. Two liquids were tested: tap water and an ethylene glycol mixture with an acoustic velocity of 1540 m/s. Needle images with the superposed grid were analyzed for needle placement accuracy. Results. The tap water produced misregistration of the needle images. The ethylene glycol mixture yielded images of vertical and horizontal needle positions accurate to 0.3 and 1 mm, respectively. Also, the importance of selecting the lowest possible equipment echo amplitude dynamic range in these tests was shown. Conclusions. This quality assurance test with the ethylene glycol mixture will permit accurate alignment of the brachytherapy needle position overlay grid for each separate transrectal probe used.