Ultrasound Guidance and Monitoring of High-power Ultrasound Therapies

强化聚焦超声（IFUS），包括高强度聚焦超声（HIFU）和组织切片，是一种高功率超声治疗方式，具有许多有前途的建立和新的临床应用。磁共振成像（MRI）目前被认为是监测和控制HIFU治疗的金标准成像方法。然而，由于时间分辨率低、成本高、对MRI兼容部件的使用要求以及在MRI机架的有限空间内安装要求等一系列具有挑战性的问题，MRI无法作为临床HIFU治疗监测和控制的首选方法。超声成像是一种相对便宜、非电离和实时的成像方式，可以与IFUS换能器无缝集成。这些特性使超声成像成为IFUS治疗监测和控制的潜在合适成像方式。目前的提案旨在建立PI在超声图像引导的IFUS治疗领域的研究活动，包括建模/模拟和实验/开发方面。拟议的研究计划旨在：(a)扩展目前由PI和他的研究小组开发的非线性超声建模和仿真算法，包括准确有效的三维非线性组织温度估计和HIFU病变生成动力学预测；(b)扩展当前基于超声的方法，由PI和他的研究小组开发，开发实时准确和鲁棒监测和控制组织中HIFU治疗的新方法。该研究的成功完成将使超声成像与MRI在HIFU治疗的监测和控制方面处于竞争地位，这反过来又将导致HIFU作为一种非或微创治疗方式在广泛的临床应用中得到更广泛的接受。

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.