Effects of MRTI sampling characteristics on estimation of HIFU SAR and tissue thermal diffusivity

While the non-invasive and three-dimensional nature of magnetic-resonance temperature imaging (MRTI) makes it a valuable tool for high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatments, random and systematic errors in MRTI measurements may propagate into temperature-based parameter estimates used for pretreatment planning. This study assesses the MRTI effects of zero-mean Gaussian noise (SD = 0.0-2.0 °C), temporal sampling (tacq = 1.0-8.0 s), and spatial averaging (Res = 0.5-2.0 mm isotropic) on HIFU temperature measurements and temperature-based estimates of the amplitude and full width half maximum (FWHM) of the HIFU specific absorption rate and of tissue thermal diffusivity. The ultrasound beam used in simulations and ex vivo pork loin experiments has lateral and axial FWHM dimensions of 1.4 mm and 7.9 mm respectively. For spatial averaging simulations, beams with lateral FWHM varying from 1.2-2.2 mm are also assessed. Under noisy conditions, parameter estimates are improved by fitting to data from larger voxel regions. Varying the temporal sampling results in minimal changes in measured temperatures (<2% change) and parameter estimates (<5% change). For the HIFU beams studied, a spatial resolution of 1 × 1 × 3 mm(3) or smaller is required to keep errors in temperature and all estimated parameters less than 10%. By quantifying the errors associated with these sampling characteristics, this work provides researchers with appropriate MRTI conditions for obtaining estimates of parameters essential to pretreatment modeling of HIFU thermal therapies.