Detection and grading of prostate cancer using temporal enhanced ultrasound: combining deep neural networks and tissue mimicking simulations.

PURPOSE  : Temporal Enhanced Ultrasound (TeUS) has been proposed as a new paradigm for tissue characterization based on a sequence of ultrasound radio frequency (RF) data. We previously used TeUS to successfully address the problem of prostate cancer detection in the fusion biopsies. METHODS  : In this paper, we use TeUS to address the problem of grading prostate cancer in a clinical study of 197 biopsy cores from 132 patients. Our method involves capturing high-level latent features of TeUS with a deep learning approach followed by distribution learning to cluster aggressive cancer in a biopsy core. In this hypothesis-generating study, we utilize deep learning based feature visualization as a means to obtain insight into the physical phenomenon governing the interaction of temporal ultrasound with tissue. RESULTS  : Based on the evidence derived from our feature visualization, and the structure of tissue from digital pathology, we build a simulation framework for studying the physical phenomenon underlying TeUS-based tissue characterization. CONCLUSION  : Results from simulation and feature visualization corroborated with the hypothesis that micro-vibrations of tissue microstructure, captured by low-frequency spectral features of TeUS, can be used for detection of prostate cancer.