Ultrasound Guidance and Monitoring of High-power Ultrasound Therapies

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Intensive focused ultrasound (IFUS), that encompasses high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) and histotripsy, is a high-power ultrasound therapy modality with a number of promising established and novel clinical applications. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is currently considered as a gold standard imaging method for monitoring and control of HIFU therapy. However, a number of challenging problems including low temporal resolution, high cost, requirement for the use of MRI-compatible parts, and fitting requirement within the confined space of the MRI gantry, prohibited MRI to be adopted as a method of choice for clinical HIFU therapy monitoring and control. Ultrasound imaging is a relatively inexpensive, non-ionizing and real-time imaging modality that could seamlessly be integrated with an IFUS transducer. These attributes make ultrasound imaging a potentially suitable imaging modality for IFUS treatment monitoring and control. The current proposal aims to build upon PI’s research activities in the area of ultrasound image-guided IFUS therapy in both modeling/simulation, and experiment/development aspects. The proposed research program is aimed towards: (a) expansion of current nonlinear ultrasound modeling and simulation algorithms, being developed by the PI and his research group, to include accurate and effective 3D nonlinear tissue temperature estimation and HIFU lesion generation dynamics prediction, and (b) expansion of current ultrasound-based methods, being developed by the PI and his research group, to develop new methods for real-time accurate and robust monitoring and control of HIFU therapies in tissue. Successful completion of the proposed research will bring ultrasound imaging into a competing position with the MRI for monitoring and control of HIFU therapies, which will, in turn, lead to a wider acceptance of HIFU as a non- or minimally-invasive therapy modality in a wide range of clinical applications.