Ablation treatment planning and device

Abstract

An ablation treatment planning and, optionally, guiding method usable for e.g. tumour tissue ablation with a cryoablation needle which cools down an adjacent tumour tissue to thereby generate an ablation volume is proposed. In order to be able to plan an ablation treatment, a 3D image data set of a region of interest may be acquired by e.g. X-ray imaging using e.g. a C-arm system. Then, 3D model data of the ablation volume are introduced into the 3D image data set for example by tagging image pixels using a stencil buffer and possibly by culling specific inside areas and/or outside areas of the ablation volume. Finally, a 2D image to be visualized to a physician and comprising a projection of the region of interest and the ablation volume is drawn wherein an MPR (multi planar reformatting) plane in which the 2D image is drawn is used as a clipping plane. With such graphical approach, an ablation volume having any arbitrary shape such as for example an ellipsoid shape may be visualized within a 3D image space by drawing 2D images in any desired MPR plane such that also oblique orientations of the ablation volume can be represented. In a subsequent guiding procedure, an ablation needle may be guided to a location and in an orientation as previously planned.

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