Thermoguide - Software Destined To Help Clinicians Monitor Thermal Ablation Procedures

Thermal ablation procedures are usually performed, in the initial phases of planning and targeting, under imaging guidance. Unfortunately, during the actual treatment, the most commonly used imaging modalities provide very little information to monitor the ablation process. Ablation procedure are usually performed according to preset protocols and therapy end point is determined based on the doctor judgment and clues like electrical impedance or temperature at the needle tip. MRI has the advantage compared to other modalities that quantitative temperature informations can be obtained non evasively during the treatment.

Thermoguide is a software which extracts temperature maps from MR images and calculates thermal dose images. These informations displayed in real time during the treatment enable the clinician to determine when the targeted tumor has been completely destroyed and to ensure that no lesions are inflicted on healthy tissues around the tumor.Thermoguide is a powerful tool to help the clinician in the case of lesions that too difficult to treat in a blind way.

Extracting temperature information from MR images is fairly straightforward. What really distinguishes Thermoguide is that it does it more reliably. To do so, it implements the best algorithms for motion correction [1], referenceless [2,4] and multi-baseline [3] temperature imaging. Depending on the target anatomy, the best method can be chosen to achieve a good temperature measurement. As the field of MR temperature imaging is still evolving, Thermoguide provide an easy way to extend its image processing capabilities with plugins.

The software features:

• a fast connection channel with the MR Host.
• a real time data handling pipeline to calculate temperature and thermal dose images.
• a built in scripting engine which let the user chose the best suited image processing for the target anatomy
• a facility to easily extend the application with plugins
• a simple reporting tool with graphs and measurements
• a high quality off-line retrospective image processing tool.