Three-dimensional echo decorrelation monitoring of radiofrequency ablation in ex vivo bovine liver

Three-dimensional (3D) echo decorrelation imaging was investigated for monitoring radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in ex vivo bovine liver. RFA experiments (N = 14) were imaged by 3D ultrasound using a matrix array, with in-phase and quadrature complex echo volumes acquired about every 11 s. Tissue specimens were then frozen at −80 °C, sectioned, and semi-automatically segmented. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed for assessing ablation prediction performance of 3D echo decorrelation with three potential normalization approaches, as well as 3D integrated backscatter (IBS). ROC analysis indicated that 3D echo decorrelation imaging is potentially a good predictor of local RFA, with the best prediction performance observed for globally normalized decorrelation. Tissue temperatures, recorded by four thermocouples integrated into the RFA probe, showed good correspondence with spatially averaged decorrelation and statistically significant but weak correlation with measured echo decorrelation at the same spatial locations. In tests predicting ablation zones using a weighted K-means clustering approach, echo decorrelation performed better than IBS, with smaller root mean square volume errors and higher Dice coefficients relative to measured ablation zones. These results suggest that 3D echo decorrelation and IBS imaging are capable of real-time monitoring of thermal ablation, with potential application to clinical treatment of liver tumors.