Non-invasive therapeutic use of High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) with 3 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging in women with symptomatic uterine fibroids.

Benign uterine fibroids are common female genital tract tumors and if symptomatic often require extensive surgery. When tumors are multiple and large or unusually located, the operative treatment may lead to significant morbidity and compromise quality of life. Recovery period after surgical treatment may be complicated by patient's medical condition and wound healing problems. Currently used other non-surgical treatment modalities usually provide only a temporal symptoms relief and may not be efficient in all affected women. In the last decade, minimally invasive treatment of uterine fibroids called Magnetic Resonance guided High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MRI HIFU) was introduced. This technique uses thermal ablation simultaneously with MRI imaging of the mass and tissue temperature measurements during the procedure where a focused ultrasound beam is applied externally to destroy tumors located in the human body. Successful application of MRI HIFU has been recently described in patients with various malignancies, such as breast, prostate and hepatocellular cancers as well as soft tissue and bone tumors. This technique is innovative and has been proven to be safe and effective but there are several limitations for treatment. The article highlights the relative advantages and disadvantages of MRI guided HIFU in women with uterine fibroids. The authors also describe high-resolution MRI technique on 3T MRI, along with the approach to interpretation of HIFU results applied to uterine fibroids that has been experienced at one institution.