Percutaneous Ablation for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Comparison of Various Ablation Techniques and Surgery

Figure 1

We participated in development of a dedicated ultrasonic transducer and have used it in 12,000 procedures of radiofrequency ablation. The dedicated ultrasonic transducer has the following advantages: (1) needle slot is located inside the transducer, (2) a puncture angle of 100 degrees is available in addition to 55, 70, and 85 degrees, (3) the same image is obtained as a regular convex transducer generates, (4) a puncture attachment is unified with the transducer, and (5) it is capable of multimodality fusion imaging.