An open-source tool for automated planning of overlapping ablation zones for percutaneous renal tumor treatment

TL;DR

This paper introduces an open-source software tool that automates the planning of overlapping ablation zones for renal tumor treatment, optimizing coverage with fewer zones by considering tissue shrinkage and tumor tolerance.

Contribution

The work presents a novel planning approach using randomized geometrical arrangements and uncertainty parameters, improving automation and efficiency in ablation zone planning.

Findings

Automated plans are comparable to expert manual plans.

The tool effectively accounts for tissue shrinkage and tumor tolerance.

Fewer ablation zones are needed with the software approach.

Abstract

Percutaneous thermal ablation is a minimally-invasive treatment option for renal cancer. To treat larger tumours, multiple overlapping ablations zones are required. Arrangements with a low number of ablation zones but coverage of the whole tumour volume are challenging to find for physicians. In this work, an open-source software tool with a new planning approach based on the automatic selection from a large number of randomized geometrical arrangements is presented. Two uncertainty parameters are introduced to account for tissue shrinking and tolerance of non-ablated tumour volume. For seven clinical renal T1a, T1b and T2a tumours, ablation plans were proposed by the software. All proposals are comparable to manual plans of an experienced physician with regard to the number of required ablation zones.