Abstract #1821

Automatic 3D Probe Localization and Iceball Segmentation for MRI-Guided Kidney Cryoablation

Xinyang Liu¹, Kemal Tuncali¹, William M. Wells, III¹, Gary P. Zientara¹

¹Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

MRI-guided cryoablation provides direct visualization of the target tumor and iceball. Visual assessment of therapy progress during the freezing cycle can be challenging, though. Nonetheless, real-time quantitative assessment of ablation is needed to ensure safety and effectiveness. We developed software that includes methods for: (1) automatic cryoprobe localization, able to detect multiple inserted probes (in 3D) from pre-freeze MRI; and, (2) automatic iceball segmentation, guided by the labeled probes, that can extract 3D iceball configuration from periodic MRI scanning during the freezing cycle. Both methods showed good accuracy when applied to five cases of 3T MRI-guided cryoablation of kidney tumors.