Comprehensive Pre-Clinical Evaluation of a Multi-physics Model of Liver Tumor Radiofrequency Ablation

International audiencePurpose: We aim at developing a framework for the validation of a subject-specific multi-physics model of liver tumor radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Methods: The RFA computation becomes subject-specific after several levels of personalization: geometrical and biophysical (hemodynamics, heat transfer and an extended cellular necrosis model). We present a comprehensive experimental setup combining multi-modal, pre-and post-operative anatomical and functional images, as well as the interventional monitoring of intra-operative signals: the temperature and delivered power. Results: To exploit this data set, an efficient processing pipeline is introduced, which copes with image noise, variable resolution and anisotropy. The validation study includes twelve ablations from five healthy pig livers: a mean point-to-mesh error between predicted and actual ablation extent of 5.3 ± 3.6 mm is achieved. Conclusion: This enables an end-to-end pre-clinical validation framework that considers the available data set