Focused Ultrasound Surgery: towards a safe therapy for clinical applications

Focused ultrasound (FUS) surgery is an emerging, non-invasive therapeutic technology which could radically transform the treatment of several medical indications, including tumor. Ultrasonic non-ionizing energy is focused into the target pathological tissue within the body with a millimetric precision and in a totally non-invasive manner. This promising technology has the potential to overcome traditional therapeutic solutions, e.g., surgical incisions, ionizing radiation or systemic drug administration. However, despite the spread of this technology – up to now, more than 370000 patients have been treated with FUS –, the promising obtained results and the increasing interest around this innovative treatment, FUS suffers from important drawbacks, which limit its further development and the impact of such a therapy in the clinical scenario. Flexibility in therapy delivery, treatment accuracy, repeatability and safety concerns are just few examples of focused ultrasound obstacles to its use in clinics. The work reported in this Thesis addresses some of the open issues in focused ultrasound therapy. All the conducted activities were approached from an engineering viewpoint, in the pursuit to optimize FUS treatment, thus boosting the introduction of this promising technology into the clinical scenario.