Real-time MR-thermometry for interventional MRI at low field in moving organs

热消融疗法通常用于肿瘤和心律失常的治疗。磁共振成像（MRI）是一种有吸引力的成像方式来指导这些程序，因为它提供了良好的软组织对比和无电离辐射。此外，MRI能够在消融过程中连续监测组织温度，可用于预测消融病变的程度并提高手术安全性。MRI引导的热疗法目前正在使用标准的临床MRI扫描仪进行，该扫描仪使用强磁场强度。然而，这种高场强MRI扫描仪的使用增加了与加热装置和程序成本相关的限制和图像伪影。因此，基于现代硬件/软件技术的低场MRI扫描仪的出现代表了解决上述限制的有希望的途径。目前，一种临床可行的低场MRI运动器官的磁共振测温方法仍有待证实。虽然低场MRI实时温度监测的可行性已经得到证实，但这些方法存在重要的局限性，包括它们无法提供表征消融病变程度所需的体积温度信息，并且无法纠正生理运动，从而阻碍了它们在运动器官中的应用。在这个项目中，我们建议开发和评估一种新的临床可行的实时核磁共振测温框架，用于低场核磁共振引导的运动器官热消融治疗。

Thermal ablation therapies are commonly used for the treatment of tumours and cardiac arrhythmias. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an attractive imaging modality to guide these procedures as it provides excellent soft-tissue contrast and no ionizing radiation. Furthermore, MRI enables continuous monitoring of tissue temperature during the ablation process, which can be used to predict the extent of ablation lesions and improve the procedure safety.MRI-guided thermal therapies are currently being performed using standard clinical MRI scanners which use a strong magnetic field strength. However, the use of such high field strength MRI scanner increases constraints and image artifacts related to the heating devices as well as procedure cost. Therefore, the emergence of a low field MRI scanner built on modern hardware/software technologies represents a promising avenue to address the aforementioned limitations.Currently, a clinically feasible MR-thermometry method for low field MRI in moving organs remains still to be demonstrated. Although the feasibility of real-time temperature monitoring by MRI at low field has been demonstrated, these methods are associated with important limitations, including their inability to provide volumetric temperature information needed to characterise the extent of ablation lesions, and no correction of physiological motion preventing their application in moving organs.In this project, we propose to develop and evaluate a novel clinically feasible real-time MR-thermometry framework for low field MRI-guided thermal ablation therapies in moving organs.