In-Vivo MR Guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Ablation of Pig Liver Tissues: Preliminary Results of a Survival Study.

Frederic Courivaud¹, Airazat M. Kazaryan¹, Alice Lund², Per Steinar Halvorsen¹, Bjrn Edwin¹, Per Kristian Hol¹

Colorectal cancer has a high incidence and is a common cause of cancer death. Surgical removal of colorectal cancer metastases in the liver improves survival rate of these patients but cannot be applied in many cases. MR guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is a promising minimal invasive alternative to surgery. However, substantial work is still needed to validate this approach. We demonstrate in this survival study a method to apply HIFU ablation using several sonication cycles during mechanically controlled breath-hold periods on anaesthetized pigs. Ablation is confirmed by MRI and histopathology one week after HIFU treatment.