ClinicIMPPACT

Clinical Intervention Modelling, Planning and Proof for Ablation Cancer Treatment


Physiological model for Radio-Frequency Ablation (RFA) therapy of liver cancer

Interactive patient-specific simulation, planning, validation of RFA therapy in the liver

Interventional Radiologists (IR) can observe the extent of necrotic region and update the heating protocol during the RFA procedure


ClinicIMPPACT is a European ICT-Project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No: 610886

Objectives

The main objective of ClinicIMPPACT is to bring the existing Radio-Frequency Ablation (RFA) model for liver cancer therapy into clinical practice.

The project pursues the following objectives:

Clinical Study

To prove and refine the RFA model in a small clinical study

Training procedure

To establish a corresponding training procedure for IR's

Development of the real-time patient-specific RFA planning and support system

To integrate the model into a real-time patient-specific RFA planning and support system for Interventional Radiologists (IR) under special consideration of their clinical workflow needs

Evaluation of the RFA model in practical use

To evaluate the clinical practicality and benefit of the model's use in the routine workflow in a user survey

About ClinicIMPPACT

Problem and Context

For many of the Radio-Frequency Ablations (RFA) performed in the liver, there is still a significant mismatch between expected and truly induced lesion size. This can lead to over-treatment with severe injuries (up to 9% major complications), or under-treatment with tumour recurrence (up to 40%).

The proposed RFA planning and support tool is therefore unique as it offers a validated software environment, where IRs can interact during the RFA treatment with the virtual tumour ablation through the extensive use of simulation and visualisation technology.

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RFA Guardian

Integrated accurate tool for computing a RFA-induced necrosis region in liver tissue. Sophisticated multi-disciplinary development, comprising image processing, perfusion measurement, real-time simulation, and visualization, ensures accurate patient-specific real-time simulation of the RFA therapy.

Clinical Study

The clinical study is at the core of the project. The patient data acquired in the study is used to validate the simulated necrosis region and to optimize the model parameters to achieve a better simulation accuracy. The RFA model is adapted to real-time requirements of the clinical environment and integrated into the clinical workflow.