HIFUpm: a Visual Environment to Plan and Monitor High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Treatments

Abstract

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is a non invasive therapeutic method, which has been a subject of interest for the treatment of various kinds of tumors. Despite the numerous advantages, HIFU techniques do not reach the high delivery precision like other therapies (e.g., radiotherapy). For this reason, a correct therapy planning and monitoring in HIFU treatments remains a challenge. We propose HIFUpm, a visual analytics approach which enables the visualization of the HIFU simulation results, while guiding the user in the evaluation of the procedure. We illustrate the use of HIFUpm for an ablative treatment of an osteoid osteoma. This use case demonstrates that HIFUpm provides a flexible visual environment to plan and monitor HIFU procedures.