A novel high intensity focused ultrasound robotic system for breast cancer treatment

High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a promising technique for cancer treatment owing to its minimal invasiveness and safety. However, skin burn, long treatment time and incomplete ablation are main shortcomings of this method. This paper presents a novel HIFU robotic system for breast cancer treatment. The robot has 4 rotational degrees of freedom with the workspace located in a water tank for HIFU beam imaging and ablation treatment. The HIFU transducer combined with a diagnostic 2D linear ultrasound probe is mounted on the robot end-effector, which is rotated around the HIFU focus when ablating the tumor. HIFU beams are visualized by the 2D probe using beam imaging. Skin burn can be prevented or alleviated by avoiding long time insonification towards the same skin area. The time cost could be significantly reduced, as there is no need to interrupt the ablation procedure for cooling the skin. In addition, our proposed robot control strategies can avoid incomplete ablation. Experiments were carried out and the results showed the effectiveness of our proposed system.