Volumetric MR-Guided High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound with Direct Skin Cooling for the Treatment of Symptomatic Uterine Fibroids: Proof-of-Concept Study

Figure 2

Typical representation of the MR images in the MR-HIFU user interface during treatment of uterine fibroids. The patient was lying in prone position (feet first) on the MR table top with the integrated direct skin cooling (DISC) device. The uterine fibroid was positioned directly above the MR-HIFU transducer. The ultrasound beam path was planned using T2-weighted MRI in three orthogonal planes, that is, coronal (top left), axial (top right), and sagittal (bottom left) plane. During each sonication, color temperature maps were computed by the MR-HIFU system using the proton resonance frequency shift (PRFS) thermometry method and shown on top of the anatomical images (top left). Immediately after MR-HIFU treatment, the volume that was successfully treated was defined as the nonenhancing part of the fibroid on contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI (bottom right).