Clinical needs and standardization of cavitation monitoring in focused ultrasound therapies

Cavitation monitoring is a cornerstone of focused ultrasound (FUS) therapies, including applications such as blood–brain barrier opening (BBBo), drug delivery, and histotripsy. This presentation will explore the clinical needs for cavitation monitoring, including assessing technical success (cavitation present, yes/no), enhancing safety, and quantifying efficacy (e.g., BBBo achieved, drug delivery quantified). Standardization is critical for interpreting cavitation data across modalities, devices, and clinical sites. Defining cavitation doses—potentially tailored to specific applications—can help with the comparison of results among treatment centers and the consistency of outcomes. Lastly, we will discuss opportunities for establishing data repositories to facilitate retrospective analyses and advance our understanding of cavitation’s role in therapeutic outcomes.