Patent ID: 8788019

Claim:
A system for performing a prostate biopsy comprising: a three-dimensional (3D) trans-rectal ultrasound transducer configured to generate 3D ultrasound image data of a target volume including said prostate; a prostate segmentation module for identifying a segmented boundary of said prostate in said 3D ultrasound image data; a three-dimensional registration module configured to register said 3D ultrasound image data with a prior acquired 3D image data of said prostate, wherein said prior acquired 3D image data includes previous core locations of biopsy cores registered to the prior acquired 3D image data, wherein said registration is based on at least one of image intensity features of corresponding anatomical structures in said 3D ultrasound image data and said prior acquired 3D image data; and segmented boundaries of said prostate in said 3D ultrasound image data and said prior acquired 3D image data; a display for displaying said 3D ultrasound image data and said previous core locations of said prior acquired 3D image superimposed in the frame of reference of said prostate of said 3D ultrasound image data; a biopsy planning module configured to process said 3D ultrasound image data and said previous core locations of said prior acquired 3D image data in combination in order to compute a biopsy plan for said prostate, said biopsy plan including one or more biopsy needle trajectories; and a biopsy needle configured to biopsy said prostate in accordance with said computed biopsy plan and following said one or more biopsy needle trajectories.