Abstract #4393

MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound Ablation of the Rat Liver

Randy L. King¹, Viola Rieke², Kim Butts Pauly²

¹Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; ²Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

HIFU is being developed for the minimally invasive treatment of primary and metastatic liver cancer. We examined the feasibility of the rat model for the study of HIFU treatment of the liver. Our results show that it is possible to localize thermal lesions to the liver of the rat by sonicating through the ribs with no skin burns. We also demonstrate the ability of MR to thermally monitor and localize the lesions resulting from such a treatment.