Identifying Prostate Brachytherapy Seeds at MRI: A Study in Phantom

Ali Fatemi-Ardekani¹, Jette Borg¹

This work illustrated the capability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pulse sequence and a corresponding image processing algorithm to localize prostate brachy-therapy seeds in a phantom. SWI (3D fast gradient echo) filtered phase images is an MRI methodology that generates positive contrast in regions of magnetic field susceptibility, as created by prostate brachytherapy seeds. Phantoms comprising of several seeds were created to assess the usability of the SWI filtered phase for imaging seeds. Resulting images show that seeds are clearly visible with high contrast using SWI filtered phase image, agreeing with CT finding.