Open AccessImage-Guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound System for Large Animal Nerve Ablation Studies
Author(s) -
Arthur Worthington,
Philip Peng,
Kevin Rod,
Vera Bril,
Jahan Tavakkoli
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ieee journal of translational engineering in health and medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.653
H-Index - 24
ISSN - 2168-2372
DOI - 10.1109/jtehm.2016.2581811
Subject(s) - bioengineering , communication, networking and broadcast technologies , components, circuits, devices and systems , computing and processing , signal processing and analysis , robotics and control systems , general topics for engineers
High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a form of thermal ablation technique, which can treat a variety of medical afflictions. One promising therapeutic use is the permanent destruction of nerves non-invasively in patients with severe spasticity or certain types of pain (e.g., phantom limb pain). To this end, HIFU requires ultrasound guidance, which allows the non-invasive, target-specific deposition of thermal energy to the targeted nerve, thereby blocking axonal conduction. In this paper, a composite system comprising both ultrasound-imaging and HIFU therapy was developed and used to induce localized non-invasive nerve blockage in an in vivo large animal study. Five pigs were used with the femoral nerve as the target. Calibrated needle thermocouples inserted at the target site were employed to monitor the target tissue temperature. The degree of nerve blockage was assessed by measuring compound action potential (CAP) signal with a clinical nerve electrophysiology system before and after HIFU exposures. An average CAP signal amplitude reduction of 49% of baseline with a standard deviation of 9% was observed after 20-30 min post exposure. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed ultrasound-guided HIFU modality as a potential non-invasive nerve ablation method.