In vivo treatment of rabbit VX2 tumor by miniaturized image-ablate ultrasound arrays

In the preclinical studies reported here, VX2 cancer within rabbit liver has been treated by bulk ultrasound ablation employing miniaturized image-ablate arrays. Array probes were constructed with 32 elements in a 2.3 × 20 mm² aperture and employed for B-scan imaging as well as bulk ablation at 4.8 MHz. In a series of in vivo experiments, tumor ablation using these arrays was histologically confirmed, with complete ablation of tumor cross sections for exposures with delivery of ¿747 J acoustic energy. These results show feasibility for development of an image-guided, interstitial bulk ultrasound ablation approach for clinical liver cancer treatment.