Robot-assisted technologies for targeted prostate biopsy: a literature review

Abstract

One key aspect in treating any cancer is timely diagnosis and treatment. Obtaining the right diagnosis depends mainly on running the biopsy algorithm. Most studies show a significant increase in sensitivity and specificity in the targeted tissue sampling method compared to standard biopsy. The human factor can result in more medical errors. This can be solved by replacing the standard biopsy method with a more advanced one. The human factor is excluded from the biopsy sampling process using the semi-automatic robotic biopsy needle guidance. This paper presents a literature review development in robot assisted prostate biopsy. A literature review was performed using PubMed and Scopus databases. Papers reporting on experiments using semi-automatic robotic systems were included. Using the literature, we described the prerequisites for the development the software for semi-automatic targeted biopsy to increase the sensitivity and specificity of prostate cancer diagnosis.

Keywords

• prostate cancer
• targeted biopsy
• robotic technologies
• robotic arm
• robotic surgical procedures
• personalised medicine
• review