Reference-less MR thermometry on pre-clinical thiel human cadaver for liver surgery with MRgFUS

Reference-less MR thermometry can be a promising technique for temperature mapping during liver treatment with Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS), as it is more robust to breathing motion than Proton Resonance Frequency MR thermometry. However, there is a lack of a pre-clinical model for repeatable testing of reference-less thermometry. The purpose of this work was to verify the explanted Thiel embalmed human liver and whole Thiel embalmed human cadaver for application of a custom made reference-less thermometry algorithm during MRgFUS sonication.

Phase maps were generated during sonication as an input to the algorithm. A square Region-of-Interest (ROI) was designed around the heated area. The ROI was interpolated using a two-dimensional polynomial to the surrounding phase map to calculate the background phase.

Using the phase information from the images, the temperature rise was measured. Validation of the methodology showed accordance of temperatures with actual temperatures.

The explanted liver and the whole cadaver constitute a promising and feasible model to study reference-less techniques for thermometry during MRgFUS, before clinical trials.