Quality Assurance of Volumetric Feedback MR-Guided HIFU Ablation Technique in Human Uterine Fibroids

Heikki Juhani Nieminen¹, Charles Mougenot², Bilgin Keserci³, Jouko Soini¹, Sham Sokka⁴, Max Oskar Khler¹, Teuvo Vaara¹

The most common clinical application of Magnetic Resonance guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MR- HIFU) is the thermal ablation of uterine fibroids. The spatial targeting and thermal dose volume accuracies of the volumetric feedback procedure are here studied based on data acquired in a clinical study with 33 patients and a total of 38 symptomatic fibroids. Based on an analysis of the ablated volumes produced by the 471 sonications performed with the Philips Sonalleve MR-HIFU system, the accuracy appears to be better than the imaging resolution, 2.52.57.0mm, which is acceptable compared to typical fibroid sizes of 3-15cm in diameter.