Control system for MR-guided cryotherapy - Short-term prediction of therapy boundary using automatic segmentation and 3D optical flow

Abstract

During cryotherapy, it is extremely useful for the interventionalists to have available intra-operatively a 3D iceball visualization, to ensure the effectiveness and safety of the procedure. Additionally, it highly beneficial to provide the interventionalists with a best estimate of how the iceball will grow in the future, and an estimate of the extent to which the target region and the tissues around it will be ablated. In this study, we introduce a newly developed control system for cryotherapy using a novel approach for the real-time/future-predicted assessments of the treatment. The system has been validated using results from cryotherapy experiments. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.