Thermal treatment system

Abstract

A thermal treatment system including a heat applying element for generating thermal doses for ablating a target mass in a patient, a controller for controlling thermal dose properties of the heat applying element, an imager for providing preliminary images of the target mass and thermal images during the treatment, and a planner for automatically constructing a treatment plan, comprising a series of treatment sites that are each represented by a set of thermal dose properties. The planner automatically constructs the treatment plan based on input information including one or more of a volume of the target mass, a distance from a skin surface of the patient to the target mass, a set of default thermal dose prediction properties, a set of user specified thermal dose prediction properties, physical properties of the heat applying elements, and images provided by the imager. The default thermal dose prediction properties are preferably based on a type of clinical application and include at least one of thermal dose threshold, thermal dose prediction algorithm, maximum allowed energy for each thermal dose, thermal dose duration for each treatment site, cooling time between thermal doses, and electrical properties for the heat applying element. The user specified thermal dose prediction properties preferably include at least one or more of overrides for any default thermal dose prediction properties, treatment site grid density; and thermal dose prediction properties not specified as default thermal dose prediction properties from the group comprised of thermal dose threshold, thermal dose prediction algorithm, maximum allowed energy for each thermal dose, thermal dose duration for each treatment site cooling time between thermal doses, and electrical properties for the heat applying element.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention mainly relates to a thermal treatment system, and in particular to a method and a device for controlling thermal dosage in the thermal treatment system. Background technique [0002] Thermal energy, such as that generated by high-intensity focused ultrasound (sound waves with a frequency above about 20 kilohertz), can be used to treat lesions in physiological tissue regions in a patient. For example, ultrasound can be used to remove tumors, thus avoiding surgery. For this purpose, it has been suggested that a piezoelectric transducer driven by an electrical signal to generate ultrasonic energy could be placed outside the patient's body as close as possible to the tissue to be resected. The transducer is geometrically shaped and positioned so that ultrasound energy is focused on a "focal zone" corresponding to a target tissue site within the patient, heating the target tissue site until it coagulates. The transducer can sequentia...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

If the procedure is MRI-guided, this means that the patient needs to remain still in the MRI machine for a longer period of time, which can be very stressful

At the same time, it is critical that all target diseased structures need to be resected (e.g. malignant cancerous tumors), in which case there are no shortcuts to the procedure in terms of patient comfort

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