High Intensity Focused Ultrasound For Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Current Development And Progress

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most commonmalignancies in the world, for patients not eligible for surgeries,non-surgical approaches may contribute to local tumor control and longersurvival time. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), as a non-invasivetechnique, is capable of ablating the tumor tissue safely, precisely, andefficiently without damaging the peripheral normal tissue, thus it’s moreand more widely used in the treatment of HCC. At present, HIFU therapymainly uses its thermal effects, two-dimensional ultrasound and magneticresonance imaging is commonly used in monitoring. HIFU combined withTACE can effectively improve the efficiency, safety and efficacy in thetreatment of HCC, radiotherapy and the application of ultrasoundmicrobubbles can also enhance the therapeutic effect. Multidetector row CT,MRI diffusion weighted imaging can effectively evaluate the ablationlesion of HIFU, local recurrence and intrahepatic metastasis, yet PET/CTcan detect extrahepatic metastasis at the same time. Among the prognosticfactors, tumor size and HIFU ablation effect are independent.