ABSTRACT Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) which is induced by heat tissue coagulation necrosis achieves the goal of treatment of tumors. It has been considered to be a safe and effective minimally invasive treatment method. essful ablation depends on the temperature change of radiofrequency ablation zone. Ultrasonic imaging is currently the monly used in medical monitoring. The purpose of this study is to explore the applicability about the temperature and elasticity imaging method under different power, which gives some reference to future clinical research. In this study, prepare some liver samples for ablation under different power (10w, 50w).The heating time was 3 minutes. The RF ablation process was monitored by a diagnostic ultrasound imager and the information was postoperatively captured for further temperature and elasticity image analysis. The infrared thermometry was concurrently applied to provide temperature change calibration during the RFA. Results from this study demonstrated that the echo shift imaging is valid under 10W RF exposure, but the ablation zone is no longer consistent with the reference under the high RF exposure. The elasticity change could well reflect the ablation zone under 50W exposure; in the contrary, under low exposure, the thermal lesion cannot be well detected due to the limited range of temperature elevation and plete tissue necrosis. The temperature imaging based on the changes in the backscattered energy showed good consistency no matter what the power was. It has better stability than echo-shift image and has no limits as the elasticity imaging which is only suited under high power. It can be a reliable tool to describe the temperature profile during radiofrequency ablation. This is the first time to discuss the reliability among the three methods. We have demonstrated that the diagnostic-ultrasound based temperature and elastography is valid for the monitoring of RF ablation process. The temperature estimation based on the
