Patent ID: 9146289
Filing Date: 2015-09-29
Classification: A61B,A61N,G01R

Abstract:
1. A process for an in-vivo targeted thermal treatment of biological tissue of a subject which undergoes elastic deformation during a respiratory cycle comprising: creating a model which predicts the motion of said tissue during a respiratory cycle by an elastic registration and an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) treatment of a training set of data, wherein the training set of data is created by tracking spatial positions of one or more salient features representative of different portions of said tissue with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) over multiple respiratory cycles of one or more subjects; using said model to target heat energy to a desired portion of said tissue over multiple respiratory cycles using said model; generating MRI thermal maps of said tissue and monitoring the thermal treatment with the MRI thermal maps; tracking actual positions of said salient features over one or more respiratory cycles of the subject; determining a change in elastic properties of said tissue of the subject at one or more determined intervals of time based on a difference between the tracked positions and positions of said salient features predicted by said model; updating the model to reflect the change in elastic properties of said tissue if the difference between the tracked positions and predicted positions is less than a given threshold and continue using the updated model to target heat energy to the desired portion of said tissue; and discontinuing use of the model and interspersing tracking and thermal mapping of the salient features of said tissue over subsequent respiration cycles if the difference between the tracked positions and predicted positions exceeds said threshold.