Periodic contrast-enhanced computed tomography for thermal ablation monitoring: a feasibility study

Image-guided tumor ablation is rapidly gaining acceptance for treating many tumors. While imaging diagnosis, treatment targeting and follow-up continue to improve, little progress has been made in developing practical imaging techniques for monitoring ablation treatments. In this study we demonstrate the feasibility of using contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) to monitor ablation zone growth with 2 min temporal resolution. Highly constrained back-projection (HYPR) post-processing is applied to the time-series of CECT images, improving image quality by a factor of four after acquiring ten time frames. Such improvements limit the amount of radiation and iodinated contrast material required to visualize the ablation zone, especially at early time points. Additional study of periodic CECT with HYPR processing appears warranted.