Spatiotemporal filtering of MR-temperature artifacts arising from bowel motion during transurethral MR-HIFU

Transurethral MR-HIFU is a minimally invasive image-guided treatment for localized prostate cancer that enables precise targeting of tissue within the gland. The treatment is performed within a clinical MRI to obtain real-time MR thermometry used as an active feedback to control the spatial heating pattern in the prostate and to monitor for potential damage to surrounding tissues. This requires that the MR thermometry measurements are an accurate representation of the true tissue temperature. The proton resonance frequency shift thermometry method used is sensitive to tissue motion and changes in the local magnetic susceptibility that can be caused by the motion of air bubbles in the rectum, which can impact the performance of transurethral MR-HIFU in these regions of the gland.

A method is proposed for filtering of temperature artifacts based on the temporal variance of the temperature, using empirical and dynamic positional knowledge of the ultrasonic heating beam, and an estimation of the measurement noise. A two-step correction strategy is introduced which eliminates artifact-detected temperature variations while keeping the noise level low through spatial averaging.

The filter has been evaluated by postprocessing data from five human transurethral ultrasound treatments. The two-step correction process led to reduced final temperature standard deviation in the prostate and rectum areas where the artifact was located, without negatively affecting areas distal to the artifact. The performance of the filter was also found to be consistent across all six of the data sets evaluated. The evaluation of the detection criterion parameter M determined that a value of M = 3 achieves a conservative filter with minimal loss of spatial resolution during the process.

The filter was able to remove most artifacts due to the presence of moving air bubbles in the rectum during transurethral MR-HIFU. A quantitative estimation of the filter capabilities shows a systematic improvement in the standard deviation of the corrected temperature maps in the rectum zone as well as in the entire acquired slice.