Thermal Ablation Therapy Control with Tissue Necrosis-driven Temperature Feedback Enabled by Neural State Space Model with Extended Kalman Filter

Thermal ablation therapy is a major minimally invasive treatment. One of the challenges is that the targeted region and therapeutic progression are often invisible to clinicians, requiring feedback provided in numerical information or imaging. Several emerging imaging modalities offer visualization of the ablation-induced necrosis formation; however, relying solely on necrosis monitoring can result in tissue overheating and endangering patients. Some of the necrosis monitoring modalities are known for their capabilities in temperature sensing, but the principles on which they are based have several limitations, such as sensitivity to the tissue motion and their environment. In this study, we propose a necrosis progression-based temperature estimation technique as an added safety feature for avoiding overheating. This model-based method does not require additional sensing hardware. It is designed to work as an independent estimator or a complimentary estimation component with other thermometers for improved robustness. For this objective, the Neural State Space model is used to approximate the ablation therapy, whose theoretical models involve nonlinear partial differential equations. Then, the Extended Kalman Filter is designed based on the model. The simulation study shows the estimation module robustly estimates the tissue temperature under several types of noise. The maximum estimation error observed before terminating ablation was around 1 °C, and the desired safety feature was successfully demonstrated. The estimator is expected to be used in a variety of necrosis monitoring modalities to guarantee more precise and safer treatment. More ambitiously, the architecture with the Neural State Space model and Extended Kalman Filter is generalizable to other medical/biological procedures involving nonlinear and patient/environment-specific physics and even to procedures having no reliable theoretical models.