An integrated system for therapy planning of high intensity focused ultrasound

High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has been developed and clinically used as a non-invasive cancer tumor treatment alternative. As compared to more commonly used cancer treatments such as surgery and radiation therapy, HIFU has the advantages of being minimally evasive and resulting in significantly less side-effect (F. Wu et al., 2004). Clinical applications of HIFU have seemed promising success in organs like the prostate (S. Madersbacher, 1995) and the breasts (F. Wu et al., 2003). Nevertheless, organ-specific and patient-specific therapy planning and precise control of the HIFU lesion remain challenging issues. In this study, we address these issues by an integrated HIFU surgical planning system which is based on pre-surgical imaging, segmentation, HIFU beam and bioheat-transfer equation (BHTE) modeling and monitored exposure. Compared to published similar approaches (R. Seip et al., 2004), our system has the potential advantage of being more precise and accurate in delivering HIFU into target area.