David A. Hormuth1,2, Brian J. Zappia2,
Andrew B. Holbrook3, Kim Butts-Pauly3, Charles L.
Dumoulin2
1Biomedical Engineering, Rose Hulman
Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN, United States; 2Imaging
Research Center, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati,
OH, United States; 3Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
United States
Software
for identifying and following anatomic features during real-time imaging was
developed. This software was tested in
real-time images of the liver during free breathing. It was able to successfully locate and
follow the diaphragm and selected blood vessels within the liver during free
breathing. These feature locations
were used to generate the coordinates of an arbitrary target within the liver
with sufficient speed and robustness to provide real-time offsets to a HIFU
beam. It is anticipated that these
algorithms will permit real-time ablation of liver lesions using HIFU during
free-breathing and overcome the difficulties associated with breath held
approaches.