Juan Camilo Plata1, Andrew Holbrook1, Punit Prakash2, Vasant Salgaonkar2, Peter Jones2, Chris Diederich2, Graham Sommer1, Kim Butts Pauly1
1Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
Monitoring tissue viability during thermal therapies is critical for assessing treatment progress and safety. Temperature and thermal dose measurements do not provide physiological response information and hence are indirect measurements of tissue viability. Diffusion weighted MRI (DWI) has been used to assess tissue viability following thermal treatment of the prostate. Following treatment, dead tissue presents a 36% reduction in the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). We obtained interleaved ADC and temperature measurements in order to determine the onset of the 36% reduction and whether it can be used as an indicator of tissue necrosis.