LabFUS - MR Guided Focused Ultrasound Device

New fields like molecular imaging [1,2], cellular therapy [3], local drug delivery [4-8] or temperature controlled localized gene expression in gene therapy [9-14], have highlighted the need for a way to increase in a controlled manner and non invasively the local temperature within an organ.

LabFUS is an efficient research tool to heat, completely non invasively, a target volume to a predefined temperature. It uses focused ultrasound to heat and MR temperature images to precisely control the energy deposition within the target to follow a predefined temperature profile.

Based on TargetedFUS technology, LabFUS is highly modular in order to correspond to the various needs of experimental research

Transducer positioning system

To ensure good performance at high field strength, the mechanical positioning system has been designed without any paramagnetic materials. The positioning system needs to be customized for the chosen transducer, the required degrees of freedom for the transducer motion and the available space in the magnet bore

Control software

The controlling software, based on Thermoguide, is very open by design so that researcher can plug in their own data processing tools in the image processing pipeline. The software can also be configured to perform sophisticated image processing by means of the included scripting architecture. In addition to the standard software, IGT also provides a sophisticated feedback control mechanism based on temperature images to precisely reach and maintain a predefined temperature over a volume of interest. This fine temperature control is essential for experiments in the fields of molecular imaging, local drug delivery, temperature controlled gene expression.