Image guided plaque ablation

摘要

A method and system for reducing vascular plaque non-invasively including imaging at least a portion of a mammalian body to produce an image; determining the location of at least one vascular plaque in said image; ascertaining the location of the base of said vascular plaque, said location of base being the target location; precisely determining the relative position of said target location with respect to the cardiac rhythm in the body; delivering a beam of ultrasound energy waves from a source to the relative position to elevate temperature of said target location in a pre-determined manner; monitoring the temperature of the target location; and discontinuing delivery of ultrasound energy waves when said target location achieves a predetermined set temperature.

主权项

1. A system for non-invasively ablating a vascular plaque by elevating the temperature of tissue by ultrasound energy waves, the system comprising:
at least one ultrasound delivery device adapted to deliver ultrasound energy waves to a focal point of targeted tissue having a size of less than 15 mm3, wherein the time duration for delivery of ultrasound energy waves is adjustable to between about 80 ms and about 1 second; a temperature monitor configured to monitor the temperature of targeted tissue at the focal point; a controller for receiving temperature information from the temperature monitor and for steering and controlling the at least one ultrasound delivery device to deliver ultrasound energy waves at the focal point, the controller is adapted to guide said at least one ultrasound delivery device to emit energy waves with an intensity between about 500 W/cm2 and about 3000 W/cm2 at said focal point to elevate the temperature of targeted tissue to a desired temperature and to shut-off delivery of ultrasound energy waves when the targeted tissue achieves the desired temperature; and an image recognizer configured to determine a location of at least one vascular plaque in an image and to ascertain the location of the base of said at least one vascular plaque, said image recognizer further ascertaining one or more target locations at the base of said at least one vascular plaque.