Purpose: Mild hyperthermia can be used as an adjuvant therapy to enhance radiation therapy or chemotherapy of cancer. However, administering mild hyperthermia is technically challenging due to the high accuracy required of the temperature control. MR guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) is a technology that can address this challenge. In this work, accurate and spatially uniform mild hyperthermia is demonstrated for deep-seated clinically relevant heating volumes using a HIFU system under MR guidance. Methods: Mild hyperthermia heating was evaluated for temperature accuracy and spatial uniformity in 11 in vivo porcine leg experiments. Hyperthermia was induced with a commercial Philips Sonalleve MR-HIFU system embedded in a 1.5T Ingenia MR scanner. The operating software was modified to allow extended duration mild hyperthermia. Heating time varied from 10 min up to 60 min and the assigned target temperature was 42.5• C. Electronic focal point steering, mechanical transducer movement, and dynamic transducer element switch-off were exploited to enlarge the heated volume and obtain uniform heating throughout the acoustic beam path. Multiple temperature mapping images were used to control and monitor the heating. The magnetic field drift and transducer susceptibility artifacts were compensated to enable accurate volumetric MR thermometry. Results: The obtained mean temperature for the target area (the cross sectional area of the heated volume at focal depth primarily used to control the heating) was on average 42.0 ± 0.6• C. Temperature uniformity in the target area was evaluated using T10 and T90, which were 43.1 ± 0.6 and 40.9 ± 0.6• C, respectively. For the near field, the corresponding temperatures were 39.3 ± 0.8• C (average), 40.6 ± 1.0• C (T10), and 38.0 ± 0.9• C (T90). The sonications resulted in a concise heating volume, typically in the shape of a truncated cone. The average depth reached from the skin was 86.9 mm. The results show that the heating algorithm was able to induce deep heating while keeping the near-field temperature uniform and at a safe level. Conclusions: The capability of MR-HIFU to induce accurate, spatially uniform, and robust mild hyperthermia in large deep-seated volumes was successfully demonstrated through a series of in vivo animal experiments. C

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The results demonstrated that, by using a designated set-up, both controlled hyperthermia and thermal ablation treatment of malignant tumours in rodents can be performed on a clinical MR-HIFU system. This approach provides all the advantages of clinical MR-HIFU, such as volumetric heating, temperature feedback control and a clinical software interface for use in rodent treatment. The use of a clinical system moreover facilitates a rapid translation of the developed protocols into the clinic.

A theoretical model for nuclear magnetic shielding of noble gas atoms soluted in liquid crystal solvents is developed. It is found that the solvent effect on the shielding can be represented as a linear combination of products of the liquid crystal orientational order parameters of varying rank. In a special case of pairwise additive shielding perturbations, most of the coefficients vanish and the shielding reduces to a sum of two terms, the isotropic and anisotropic parts. Both contributions are directly proportional to the density of the liquid crystal, and the anisotropic part is also directly proportional to the second rank orientational order parameter of the liquid crystal. The developed model is used to account for the behavior of the 129Xe shielding in the nematic liquid crystal 4-ethoxybenzylidene-2,6-dideutero-4′-n-butylaniline (d2-EBBA). The pairwise additivity approximation of the shielding perturbations is found to explain the observed temperature dependence of the 129Xe shielding satisfactorily. In particular, the temperature dependence of the isotropic part is mostly due to the change in the liquid crystal density, whereas the anisotropic part is mainly controlled by the temperature dependence of the Xe–liquid crystal molecule pair correlation function and the second rank orientational order parameter of the liquid crystal. This result differs from the results of the phenomenological theory of Lounila et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 97, 8977 (1992)], where only the density and the orientational order parameter were assumed to be significantly temperature dependent.

There is growing interest in performing hyperthermia treatments with clinical MRI-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) therapy systems designed for tissue ablation. During hyperthermia treatment, however, due to the narrow therapeutic window (41–45°C), careful evaluation of the accuracy of PRF shift MR thermometry for these types of exposures is required. Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of MR thermometry using a clinical MR-HIFU system equipped with hyperthermia treatment algorithm. Methods Mild heating was performed in a tissue-mimicking phantom with implanted temperature sensors using the clinical MR-HIFU system. The influence of image-acquisition settings and post-acquisition correction algorithms on the accuracy of temperature measurements was investigated. The ability to achieve uniform heating for up to 40 minutes was evaluated in rabbit experiments. Results Automatic center-frequency adjustments prior to image-acquisition corrected the image-shifts on the order of 0.1 mm/min. Zero and first order phase variations were observed over time, supporting the use of a combined drift correction algorithm. The temperature accuracy achieved using both center-frequency adjustment and the combined drift correction algorithm was 0.57 ± 0.58 °C in heated region and 0.54 ± 0.42 °C in unheated region. Conclusion Accurate temperature monitoring of hyperthermia exposures using PRF shift MR thermometry is possible through careful implementation of image-acquisition settings and drift correction algorithms. For the evaluated clinical MR-HIFU system, center-frequency adjustment eliminated image-shifts, and a combined drift correction algorithm achieved temperature measurements with an acceptable accuracy for monitoring and controlling hyperthermia exposures.