Mahamadou Diakite1, Allison Payne2, Nick Todd2, Dennis L. Parker2
1Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt lake, UT, United States; 2Radiology, Utah Center of Advanced Imaging Research (UCAIR), Salt Lake City, UT, United States
One of the main reasons focused ultrasound surgery has not been used widely in the clinical setting has been the difficulty to assess the extent of biological tissue damage due to hyperthermia. Denaturation of macromolecules within the tissues is believed to be the major factor contributing to the damage of tissues upon hyperthermia. Water in biological tissues is mostly bound to macromolecules such as: protein, fibers, membranes, and ions. As a result, the values of the relaxation time (T1) of the tissue water, which are related to the translational and rotational rates of water, represent the intrinsic probes for investigating the structural changes in the tissues at high temperature. It has been also shown that methods based on the temperature dependency of the water proton resonance frequency (PRF) shift has the best ability to quantify temperature rises in soft tissues [1].