Role of Fusion Imaging in Image-Guided Thermal Ablations

Abstract

Thermal ablation (TA) procedures are effective treatments for several kinds of cancers. In the recent years, several medical imaging advancements have improved the use of image-guided TA. Imaging technique plays a pivotal role in improving the ablation success, maximizing pre-procedure planning efficacy, intraprocedural targeting, post-procedure monitoring and assessing the achieved result. Fusion imaging (FI) techniques allow for information integration of different imaging modalities, improving all the ablation procedure steps. FI concedes exploitation of all imaging modalities’ strengths concurrently, eliminating or minimizing every single modality’s weaknesses. Our work aims to give an overview of FI, explain and analyze FI technical aspects and its clinical applications in ablation therapy and interventional oncology.

Keywords

• fusion imaging
• imaging-guided ablation
• thermal ablation
• image processing
• ultrasound
• contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS)