Software-supported analysis of MRgFUS therapy outcome

Recently, first studies on MRgFUS for therapy of localized prostate cancer have been presented. However, MRI is not only useful to monitor and guide FUS prostate cancer therapy but might add valuable morphologic and functional information for therapy stratification and outcome. Since multi-parametric MR protocols are time-consuming to generate and evaluate, they are not performed during an MRgFUS session. Rather these data are acquired before MRgFUS for therapy planning and after therapy for outcome assessment. This approach leads to a plethora of MR images (before, during and after therapy) that can be difficult to analyze and correlate. To support the radiologist, a software prototype was therefore developed to analyze MRgFUS therapy outcome based on image registration and synchronization.