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

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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.