About the Authors

Maurice M. Garcia

mgarcia@urology.ucsf.edu

Affiliations Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, University of California San Francisco – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Alexander R. Gottschalk

Affiliations Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, University of California San Francisco – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Jonathan Brajtbord

Affiliation Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Badrinath R. Konety

Affiliation Department of Urology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America

Maxwell V. Meng

Affiliations Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, University of California San Francisco – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Mack Roach III

Affiliations Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, University of California San Francisco – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Peter R. Carroll

Affiliations Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America, University of California San Francisco – Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The University of California San Francisco has filed a U.S. Provisional Patent Application (Title: Fiduciary Markers and Methods of Placement; Provisional (U.S. Patent Application Serial Number 61/518,742) and an International Patent Application (PCT; PCT number: PCT/US12/37379). Upon invention and disclosure, this intellectual property (IP) was assigned to the University of California. By policy, the University of California shares a fraction of income generated from licensing with the inventor. As such Maurice Garcia, M.D., MAS., has a financial interest in the IP described in the manuscript. However, to the present date, the University has not licensed the patent application or any portion of the IP therein, to any commercial interest. In addition, the University of California filed a U.S. Patent application for intellectual property (IP) related to the smartphone image-based measurement App, MedMeasure! Used in this work: U.S. Patent Number 61548750. This IP was licensed by author Maurice Garcia, as required by the University of California in order to proceed to program (create) the App and made it available – as no such App currently exists. This App is currently available in iTunes and is free, though upgrades that allow one to perform measurements similar to those described in this manuscript (e.g. use of a non-standard object such as our fiducial markers to calibrate the caliper, does require an in-app purchase (cost = 0.99 cents)). No other App currently available on iTunes or for Android smartphones affords the ability to measure actual distance on a 2-D camera image, and it is for this reason that the authors used the App designed by their group (MMG). The authors have added “Patents Pending” to the text to reflect the patents-pending status of the App. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed in the PLOS ONE Guide for Authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MMG ARG BRK MR PRC. Performed the experiments: MMG ARG BRK JB MVM MR PRC. Analyzed the data: MMG ARG BRK JB MVM MR PRC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MMG ARG BRK JB MVM MR PRC. Wrote the paper: MMG ARG BRK JB MVM MR PRC.