How do we watch ablations to make sure we get enough treatment, but not too much treatment for each patient? Medical imaging such as ultrasound, CT and MRI. But can we see everything? We’ve worked with Tomy Varghese’s group on ultrasound-based solutions that show promise (eg, strain imaging, strain elastography, elastic modulus imaging, and attenuation imaging) even if they are only 2D options right now.
Po-hung Wu‘s study describes a different approach: serial contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) during the ablation. We cut up a conventional abdominal CECT temporally, so that the contrast material is delivered in small parts and low-dose CT scanning is performed every minute. Because image quality is degraded in each scan, we used HYPR to reduce noise and increase contrast between the ablation zone and normal liver. The result is the ability to effectively monitor ablation growth with CT without increasing radiation or contrast material dose.