Patent ID: 8099147

Claim:
An apparatus for thermally inducing and monitoring in a patient changes to localized regions of tissue within a volume of tissue of a patient's body during thermotherapy, comprising: means for illuminating a volume of tissue of the patient's body with X-rays at a plurality of different times during thermotherapy; means for detecting a plurality of portions of said X-rays that have passed through said volume of tissue of the patient's body during said illuminating at a plurality of different times during thermotherapy; means for locating at least a portion of the patient's body including said volume of tissue between the means for illuminating and the means for detecting; means for generating a plurality of X-ray image signals from said plurality of portions of X-rays detected during said illuminating at a plurality of different times during thermotherapy; means for applying localized internal heating to a sub-region of tissue within said volume of tissue, said localized internal heating being sufficient to induce a tissular change within said sub-region of tissue; means for generating successive difference image signals during thermotherapy based upon comparisons of X-ray image signals where at least one of the X-ray image signals of each comparison is one of said plurality of X-ray image signals generated during thermotherapy, wherein each of said difference image signals is indicative of temperature changes across said volume of tissue induced by applied localized internal heating corresponding to said compared X-ray image signals, said successive difference image signals comprising information of tissular changes within said volume of tissue induced by the applied localized internal heating; and means for successively rendering a plurality of visual images utilizing said plurality of successive difference image signals during thermotherapy, wherein each of said visual images indicates said temperature changes across said volume of tissue.