Comparison study of reconstruction algorithms for volumetric necrosis maps from 2D multi-slice GRE thermometry images

Abstract

AbstractCancer is a disease which requires a significant amount of careful medical attention. For minimally-invasive thermal ablation procedures, the monitoring of heat distribution is one of the biggest challenges. In this work, three approaches for volumetric heat map reconstruction (Delauney triangulation, minimum volume enclosing ellipsoids (MVEE) and splines) are presented based on uniformly distributed 2D MRI phase images rotated around the applicator’s main axis. We compare them with our previous temperature interpolation method with respect to accuracy, robustness and adaptability. All approaches are evaluated during MWA treatment on the same data sets consisting of 13 ex vivo bio protein phantoms, including six phantoms with simulated heat sink effects. Regarding accuracy, the DSC similarity results show a strong trend towards the MVEE ($$0.80\pm 0.03$$ 0.80 ± 0.03 ) and the splines ($$0.77\pm 0.04$$ 0.77 ± 0.04 ) method compared to the Delauney triangulation ($$0.75\pm 0.02$$ 0.75 ± 0.02 ) or the temperature interpolation ($$0.73\pm 0.07$$ 0.73 ± 0.07 ). Robustness is increased for all three approaches and the adaptability shows a significant trend towards the initial interpolation method and the splines. To overcome local inhomogeneities in the acquired data, the use of adaptive simulations should be considered in the future. In addition, the transfer to in vivo animal experiments should be considered to test for clinical applicability.