Method and system for automatic planning of a minimally invasive thermal ablation and method for training a neural network

A computer-implemented method for automatic planning of a thermal ablation of a target object located within a biological body, the method comprising:

• acquiring one or several images of the target object within the biological body;
• determining a position of the target object within the biological body from the one or several acquired images;
• determining a position of an external surface of the biological body with respect to the position of the target object from the one or several acquired images;
• providing an initial set of N RF (radiofrequency) ablation needles including RF ablation needles of one or several types being usable for carrying out the thermal ablation, where N is a number of RF ablation needles of the initial set;
• acquiring a set of characterizing features for each type of the one or several types of RF ablation needles in the initial set of N RF ablation needles, the set of characterizing features being common to all RF ablation needles of a same type, and the set of characterizing features including at least one of at least one fixed parameter or at least one variable parameter;
• feeding into a neural ordinary differential equation algorithm the position of the external surface, the position of the target object, and at least one of the characterizing features;
• configuring the neural ordinary differential equation algorithm for outputting at least one thermal ablation plan, each of the at least one thermal ablation plan including a final set of the RF ablation needles required for ablating the target object, the final set including N_F≤N RF ablation needles, and for each RF ablation needle of the final set, its type, its trajectory from the external surface, and optionally, a value for the at least one variable parameter, where N_F is a number of the RF ablation needles in the final set;
• and
• providing the at least one thermal ablation plan through an interface configured for guiding a clinician to realize the thermal ablation of the target object.