Thermal treatment planning for SonoKnife focused-ultrasound thermal treatment of head and neck cancers

The purpose is to develop a patient-specific treatment planning method for a cylindrically-focused (i.e., SonoKnife) ultrasound thermal therapy system to optimize the thermal treatment of locally-advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) and/or positive lymph nodes. To achieve a more efficient and effective treatment, a temperature-based treatment planning was devised, which was composed of : (1) a 3D acoustic-thermal model has been developed to simulate the acoustic field, temperature distribution, and thermal dose coverage induced by the SonoKnife applicator. (2) A 3D relevant anatomical structures (e.g. the H&N tumors, bones and cavities) were reconstructed based on multislice CT scans. A step-and-shoot strategy was devised to perform the treatment, in which the initial applied power levels, placement of the transducers, and sonication times per scan were determined by conducting a temperature-based forward simulation. The maximum temperature, thermal dose coverage of target, and thermal exposure to surrounding tissue were analyzed. For performance evaluation, the treatment planning was applied on representative examples obtained from the clinical radiation therapy of HNSCC and positive lymph nodes. This treatment planning platforms can be used to guide applicator placement, set-up configurations, and applied power levels prior to delivery of a treatment or for post-procedure analysis of temperature distributions.