Laparoscopic high intensity focused ultrasound for the treatment of soft tissue

There is a growing demand to perform focal surgery, particularly for prostate and kidney tumors. RF and Cryo ablation are used for treatment of tumors; however, there are reported complications mainly skipping of cancer cells and bleeding. It has been shown that HIFU can provide acoustic hemostasis to overcome such complications. However, HIFU must compete with these modalities with improved treatment efficiency and the size of the applicator must fit in a 12 mm trocar/port used during the laparoscopic surgery. We modified the Sonatherm-600i applicator and transducer that generates a split beam HIFU at 4 MHz with a center element for imaging operating at 6.5 MHz. The transducer is integrated in a robotic probe that renders bi-plane images for tissue localization and ablation. Based on selected tissue ablation volume, treatment trajectory is generated by the computer to provide optimum thermal dose to result in complete coagulative necrosis. The treatment is conducted using continuous HIFU with an interlaced imaging for tissue change monitoring. The ablation efficiency of this device is @ 1 cc/min that is better than Cryo and RF ablation. Results will be presented from recent animal studies.