Assessment of HIFU lesions by shear-wave elastography: Initial in-vivo results.

The aim of this work was to evaluate Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) as a tool to visualize HIFU lesions in an acute in-vivo setting. Extracorporeal HIFU sonications of liver were performed on 14 rabbits in 19 consecutive, adjacent pulses, with in situ energies between 75 J and 228 J. A set of images of the sonicated area was acquired prior and post HIFU ablation: 2 orthogonal SWE images (transverse and sagittal) and contrast enhanced CT scan. SWE images were acquired with theAixplorer® device (SuperSonic Imagine, Aix, France). Prior to the treatment, the liver elasticity appeared homogeneous, with a elasticity comprised between 5 and 11 kPa. The lesion extents were manually segmented on post-treatment SWE images and their areas A(SWE)T (transverse) and A(SWE)S (sagittal) were computed. On 3D CT the lesions were segmented as a hypo intense (devascularized) region on 3D CT images, and considered as "ground truth". The transverse and sagittal planes passing by their centers of mass were extracted. The lesion areas were computed for each plane, respectively A(CT)T and A(CT)S. The ratios A(CT)T/A(SWE)T and A(CT)S/A(SWE)S were computed for all the 14 cases. SWE appear to underestimate the lesion extent in the sagittal orientation with respect to CT images, while a good matching is obtained in the transverse orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]