Experimental Evaluation Of Targeting Accuracy Of Ultrasound Guided HIFU Treatment System

Thanks to recent development of medical imaging and high intensity focused ultrasound(HIFU),the combination of the two technologies – image guided HIFU treatment system has been approved for different clinical applications in many countries.Benefiting from its advantages of non-invasive,repeatable and non-hospitalization needed,HIFU treatment is widely recommended for the treatment of tumor in uterus,prostate,liver and etc.Under the leadership of Academician Yazhu Chen,the Biomedical Instrument Research Institute in which I'm working has made a great progress in the development of HIFU treatment system.To ensure therapeutical thermal dose is correctly delivered to target area,prevent damaging the vital organs and tissues around the lesion,the targeting accuracy of HIFU system must be carefully evaluated before clinical application,to satisfy clinical requirement of accuracy and ensure therapeutic efficacy and patient's safety.Several evaluation methods of targeting accuracy have been published,but they may face the problems of high costs,low reusability and different utilization limitations,which make them cannot be well adapted to the current ultrasound guided HIFU(USgHIFU)system.The purpose of this study is to design an evaluation method of targeting accuracy and related experimental setup,perform an evaluation of current device,and propose the general method to other HIFU treatment systems.The study builds a systematic evaluation theory and relevant experiment based on a designed thermocouple array,quantitatively evaluate the targeting accuracy of an USgHIFU system and the analysis of error sources.The results of evaluation can serve as a performance reference of device test,provides possible resolution of improvement in the procedure of development.Compared to the published methods in similar theme,the test instrument costs less,the experimental procedure is simple and convenient,the duration of each evaluation is short,and it has a good potential to adapt to different devices and experimental situation.