National Center for Image Guided Therapy

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MR Guided Therapy P01-CA67165

The main objective of this internal collaboration among all NCIGT Cores (funded under an NIH program grant) is to build a system to improve intraoperative visualization, navigation and monitoring for image-guided neurosurgery. This collaborative set of projects will serve as a testbed for basic image-guided neurosurgery technology that is being developed in the NCIGT's Neurosurgery Core. The five projects are:

• Integrated Intraoperative Guidance for Neurosurgery: This project's objective is to create an augmented reality visualization of the intraoperative configuration of the patient’s brain merged with high resolution preoperative imaging data, including improving intraoperative navigation, targeting and visualization and implementation.

• MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound: The main objective of Project 2 is to use intracavitary ultrasound phased arrays to effectively coagulate prostate tumors and use through-the-skull FUS technology to ablate brain tumors. It will serve as a testbed for the technology developed in the NCIGT's Focused Ultrasound Core that is devoted to designing and building phased array systems for FUS. Progress to date includes experiments in three dogs with the Insightec 1000-channel phased array system in which investigators ablated a discrete volume in the prostate that was compared with resulting post-treatment imaging and histology.

• Image-Based Navigation for Interventional Robotic Devices: This project's objective is to develop accurate and robust methods for tracking the motion of interventional devices during MRI-guided procedures, an effort complementing the aims of the NCIGT as a whole. Researchers developed an image-based approach for localizing devices in the magnet bore to enable simultaneous imaging and navigation for image-guided intervention. This technology is being used to develop a system for robot-assisted navigation of MRI-guided prostate biopsy and brachytherapy and to enable the in vivo studies of the NCIGT's Prostate Core. The use of Slicer visualization and (simple) scanner control benefits the NCIGT's Imaging Core efforts in developing a DARTS system that when integrated with 3D Slicer culminates in a comprehensive dynamic imaging and display system.

• Enhanced Parallel MRI Data Acquisition: This project's objective is to provide implementation-focused research for the AMIGO suite to translate the latest 3D dynamic imaging technical advances, specifically published techniques in parallel MRI and reduced field-of-view methods, into practical functions on the 3T 16-channel MRI scanner.

• MRI Guided Interventions in the Prostate: This project is focused on adapting a prostate IGT application, MR-guided prostate brachytherapy and biopsy computer software originally developed for the 0.5T scanner, to a 3T scanner. New IGT procedures for MR-guided neurosurgery, MR-guided prostate interventions and MR-guided thermal ablations will then be possible. To date, an integrated real-time MR imaging method has been developed with a robot mechanism for “closed-loop” needle guidance during prostate biopsies. Robotic actions are tracked in MR scans and fed back to the interventionalist for interactively determining further actions.

Publications

• Hoge WS, Chu R, Jolesz F, Samset E. Fast Regularized Parallel Imaging in an MR Image-Guided Therapy Application. Proceedings of the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers. Nov 2007; pp.1869-1873.
• Talos I, Zou K, Kikinis R, Jolesz F. Volumetric assessment of tumor infiltration of adjacent white matter based on anatomic MRI and diffusion tensor tractography. Acad Radiol. 2007 Apr;14(4):431-6. PMID: 17368212.
• Wittek A, Miller K, Kikinis R, Warfield SK. Patient-specific model of brain deformation: Application to medical image registration. J Biomech. 2007;40(4):919-29. PMID: 16678834.
• Mulkern RV, Barnes AS, Haker SJ, Hung YP, Rybicki FJ, Maier SE, Tempany CMC. Biexponential characterization of prostate tissue water diffusion decay curves over an extended b-factor range. Magn Reson Imaging. 2006 Jun;24(5):563-8. PMID: 16735177.
• Talos I, Zou KH, Ohno-Machado L, Bhagwat JG, Kikinis R, Black PM, Jolesz FA. Supratentorial low-grade glioma resectability: statistical predictive analysis based on anatomic MR features and tumor characteristics. Radiology. 2006 May;239(2):506-13. PMID: 16641355.