Patent ID: 8295913

Claim:
A method for planning and/or monitoring an interventional high-frequency thermal ablation, comprising the steps of: acquiring 3D image data of a region of interest of a body with a tomographical imaging apparatus and displaying an image represented by said 3D image data at a display device, said 3D image data and the displayed image comprising a target area for a thermal ablation and an indication of a spatial extent of said target area; providing a database to store at least one interventional instrument available for implementing said thermal ablation, and to store data representing a volume region in which thermal ablation is achieved in tissue with the instrument for at least one high-frequency power that can be generated with the instrument; marking at least one marked position in the displayed image, selected from the group consisting of an actual position of the instrument or a planned ablation position of the instrument; upon marking said marked position, automatically mixing a 3D object, representing said volume region or a derived volume region that is derived from said volume region, in the displayed image and representing said 3D object at least semi-transparently at the ablation position in the displayed image; marking at least two different marked positions in said image, each marked position representing a position at which a high-frequency thermal ablation is to occur, and mixing respective 3D objects into said image representing the volume regions for each of said marked positions, and automatically connecting said ablation positions with a straight connecting line in said 3D image data that extends to an exterior surface of the body, to thereby define a penetration channel, and displaying said penetration channel in said image at said display device; and manually interactively shifting the mixed-in 3D objects in said image at said display device using a graphical input tool that interacts with said display device, and automatically modifying said straight line connection to follow said shifting.