Pub Date : 2024-06-05DOI: 10.1109/OJEMB.2024.3410118
Yacine M'Rad;Caecilia Charbonnier;Marcelo Elias de Oliveira;Pauline Coralie Guillemin;Lindsey Alexandra Crowe;Thibaud Kössler;Pierre-Alexandre Poletti;Sana Boudabbous;Alexis Ricoeur;Rares Salomir;Orane Lorton
Purpose: Transducer positioning for liver ablation by magnetic resonance-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MRgHIFU) is challenging due to the presence of air-filled organs or bones on the beam path. This paper presents a software tool developed to optimize the positioning of a HIFU transducer dedicated to abdominal thermal therapy, to maximize the treatment's efficiency while minimizing the near-field risk. Methods: A software tool was developed to determine the theoretical optimal position (TOP) of the transducer based on the minimization of a cost function using the particle swarm optimization (PSO). After an initialization phase and a manual segmentation of the abdomen of 5 pigs, the program randomly generates particles with 2 degrees of freedom and iteratively minimizes the cost function of the particles considering 3 parameters weighted according to their criticality. New particles are generated around the best position obtained at the previous step and the process is repeated until the optimal position of the transducer is reached. MR imaging data from in vivo