Intra-Arterial Image Guidance With Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry Shape Sensing

IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2019 Feb;38(2):482-492. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2018.2866494. Epub 2018 Aug 22.

Abstract

Intra-arterial liver cancer therapies, such as trans-arterial chemoembolization, are the preferred therapeutic approaches for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. However, these palliative techniques are challenging for delivering therapeutic agents selectively in the tumor without real-time 3-D visualization of the catheter within the hepatic arteries. The objective of this paper is to develop and evaluate in pre-clinical tests an advanced interventional guidance platform using a distributed strain sensing device based on optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR) to track the tip and shape of a catheter. The scattering properties of a fiber triplet are enhanced by focusing an ultraviolet beam on these fibers, producing a fully distributed strain sensor, which avoids interpolation errors observed with traditional shape tracking systems. A 3-D roadmap of the hepatic arteries is obtained from a combined fully convolutional and residual networks trained on MR angiography and combined with a 4-D flow dynamic sequence enabling to map blood flow velocities. An anisotropic curvature matching method is proposed to map the sensed data onto pre-operative MR and using 3-D ultrasound to correct for non-rigid deformations. Experiments were conducted in a controlled environment setting as well as in both synthetic phantoms and in five porcine models to assess the performance for device navigation, yielding satisfactory tracking accuracy with 3-D mean errors of 2.8 ± 0.9 mm. We present the first pilot study of MR-compatible UV-exposed OFDR optical fibers for non-ionizing device guidance in intra-arterial procedures, with the potential of avoiding multiple hospitalizations required to perform invasive selective chemoembolizations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Hepatic Artery / diagnostic imaging
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
  • Liver / blood supply
  • Liver / diagnostic imaging
  • Liver Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Liver Neoplasms / therapy
  • Magnetic Resonance Angiography / methods
  • Optical Fibers
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Swine

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