High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Therapy and ablation of breast tumors

Introduction: High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) Therapy refers to a technique where in HIFU beams are emitted from a high-powered transducer that can noninvasively target a tissue volume inside the body without affecting the intervening and surrounding tissue. In this review, we present the mechanism of action, characterization and application of this technique in cancer treatment. Material and method: Publications were retrieved by a systematic search of multiple bibliographic databases, including Medline, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane library, web of science, Biomed central, science Direct, and Google scholar. The language of search was restricted to English. Result: HIFU causes an increased temperature within the focal volume, resulting in tissue coagulative necrosis. Two principle mechanisms, hyperthermia andacoustic cavitation are responsible for the tissue destruction. Because human tissues have viscoelastic characteristics, the acoustic energy is lost and converted to heat. As a result, tissue temperature increases rapidly above 80˚C in the focal region, resulting in the protein denaturation and the formation of a necrotic lesion with a sharp demarcation. Discussion: HIFU treatment has some advantages over other thermal ablation method. It is noninvasive and nonionizing, which means it can be repeated asdesired because it has no long-term cumulative effects.

Keywords:

High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound , mechanism of action , tumor ablation