Image-guided Focused Ultrasound Therapy: Physics and Clinical Applications

Ultrasound has been widely used in diagnostic imaging for a long time. In the past 10 years, image-guided focused ultrasound therapy has seen rapid growth, in biomedical science and engineering, and in clinical medicine. The purpose of this book is to bring internationally renowned authorities and experts in this field together to provide up-to-date and comprehensive reviews of basic physics, biomedical engineering, and clinical applications of focused ultrasound therapy in a widely accessible fashion.

Focusing on applications in cancer treatment, this book covers basic principles, practical aspects, and clinical applications of focused ultrasound therapy. It reviews the medical physics and bio-effects of focused ultrasound beams on living tissues, dosimetric methods and measurements, transducer engineering, image guidance and monitoring (including magnetic resonance imaging -- MRI -- and ultrasound), treatment delivery systems, and clinical applications. The book also gives practical guidelines on patient setup, target localisation, treatment planning and image-guided procedures for the treatment in various sites, including the prostate, liver, pancreas, breast, kidney, uterus, bone, and brain.

The book discusses major challenges for the use of focused ultrasound energy on living tissues and explores the cellular and physiological responses that can be employed in the fight against cancer from biological, physics and engineering perspectives. It also highlights recent advances, including the treatment of solid tumours using image-guided drug delivery, and the exploitation of microbubbles, nanoparticles, and other cutting-edge techniques. Readers who are interested in learning more about the technique and the clinical applications described in each chapter can find more information in the comprehensive bibliographies provided.

This book is suitable for anyone involved in, or looking to become involved in, the research and clinical applications of focused ultrasound therapy, including medical professionals, physicists, biomedical engineers, graduate students and others working in this multidisciplinary field. It offers a balanced and critical assessment of state-of-the-art technologies, major challenges, and an outlook on the future of focused ultrasound therapy. It presents a thorough introduction for those new to the field while providing helpful, up-to-date information and guidelines for readers already using this therapy in clinical and pre-clinical settings.

Key Features:

• Brings together a wide range of world-leading experts in this new field, presenting the latest clinical outcomes of using focused ultrasound for the treatment of benign and malignant diseases
• Covers the fundamental physics of focused ultrasound therapy and ultrasound-mediated drug delivery, including chapters on the mechanism of sonoporation, microbubble and ultrasound interaction, and their potential clinical applications
• Introduces clinical guidelines for focused ultrasound therapy, including indications and contraindications, treatment goals, the selection of patients, clinical observation during treatment procedure and follow-up, and characteristics of image changes after treatment

Professor Gail ter Haar, DSc, is a renowned expert who works at the intersection of focused ultrasound and physics and leads the therapeutic ultrasound team at The Institute for Cancer Research (ICR), UK. Gail is founding President of the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU).

Dr. Ian Rivens, PhD, is a Staff Scientist at The Institute for Cancer Research (ICR), UK with a background in biomedical physics and 35 experience of developing equipment and techniques in the laboratory and translating them to bed-side research via clinical trials in oncology and fetal medicine He is a founding member of ISTU with extensive experience of supervising PhD and MD students.

Professor Feng Wu, MD & PhD, is a world-leading HIFU surgeon who works in clinical applications of focused ultrasound therapy. Feng is currently working as HIFU Consultant at Oxford University Hospitals, and also serving as Senior Clinical Scientist at Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford, UK. He is a co-founder and the first Secretary of the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU).