MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound Ablation Through the Ribcage

Viola Rieke¹, Randy Lee King¹, Aravind Swaminathan¹, Micheal V. McConnell¹, Kim Butts Pauly¹

For MR-guided FUS applications in the heart, a major limitation is the restricted acoustic window, due to the higher acoustic impedance of thoracic bone and cartilage compared to soft tissues. Here, we investigate if a human size ribcage provides enough acoustic window to ablate tissue in the heart. The results show that ablative temperatures can be reached with the acoustic windows provided, making FUS ablation in the heart a possibility.