SonaCare Medical and UCL Business PLC announced a partnership to integrate SmartTarget image registration and fusion software into SonaCare Medical’s high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) systems.
“SmartTarget software technology combines advanced soft-tissue modeling and multimodal image registration techniques to compensate for prostate deformation and provide a clinically practical solution to MR-ultrasound fusion for high-accuracy targeted therapy,” said Dean Barratt, PhD, senior lecturer at the UCL Centre for Medical Image Computing.
Enabling image-guided targeting of prostate tumors, SmartTarget combines and displays diagnostic information from ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and previous biopsies to enable targeted prostate biopsy and treatment. SmartTarget is based on image analysis algorithms developed at the UCL Centre for Medical Image Computing. More than 40 prostate cancer patients have been successfully treated at UCLH using the Sonablate 500 with the aid of SmartTarget as part of the INDEX Trial. The system is also used within other UCL-led clinical trials that focus on targeted prostate biopsy.
Published results from UCL demonstrate that MRI-US registration can localize lesions on the Sonablate 500 system without interfering with the standard surgical workflow. According to UCL researchers, fewer, and better, biopsies could be performed on suspicious lesions seen on pre-biopsy, with potentially increased diagnostic rates of clinically significant cancer, and reduced rates for over-diagnosis of clinically insignificant disease.
