Image-guided brachytherapy for prostate cancer.

Prostate brachytherapy offers and effective treatment for organ-confined prostate carcinoma. It is rapidly delivered compared with external beam radiation therapy or surgery and well tolerated by patients. Volumetric imaging and image guidance play critical roles in patient selection, treatment planning, treatment delivery, and postimplant assessment. Costs, availability and ease of use often dictate the local and regional differences in imaging approach, whether ultrasound, CT, or MR. Future volumetric image developments may permit multimodality image fusion to integrate tumor-specific imaging such as MR spectroscopy or positron emission tomography/CT into real-time ultrasound, CT, or MR.