Highly sensitive time-resolved thermography and multivariate image analysis of the cerebral cortex for intrasurgical diagnostics

Julia Hollmach; Nico Hoffmann; Christian Schnabel; Saskia Küchler; Stephan Sobottka; Matthias Kirsch; Gabriele Schackert; Edmund Koch; Gerald Steiner

doi:10.1117/12.2002342

8 March 2013 Highly sensitive time-resolved thermography and multivariate image analysis of the cerebral cortex for intrasurgical diagnostics

Julia Hollmach, Nico Hoffmann, Christian Schnabel, Saskia Küchler, Stephan Sobottka, Matthias Kirsch, Gabriele Schackert, Edmund Koch, Gerald Steiner

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8565, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics IX; 856550 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2002342
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2013, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Time-resolved thermography is a novel method to assess thermal variations and heterogeneities in tissue and blood. The recent generation of thermal cameras provides a sensitivity of less than mK. This high sensitivity in conjunction with non-invasive, label-free and radiation-free monitoring makes thermography a promising tool for intrasurgical diagnostics. In brain surgery, time-resolved thermography can be employed to distinguish between normal and anomalous tissue. In this study, we investigated and discussed the potential of time-resolved thermography in neurosurgery for the intraoperative detection and demarcation of tumor borders. Algorithms for segmentation, reduction of movement artifacts and image fusion were developed. The preprocessed image stacks were subjected to discrete wavelet transform to examine individual frequency components. K-means clustering was used for image evaluation to reveal similarities within the image sequence. The image evaluation shows significant differences for both types of tissue. Tumor and normal tissues have different time characteristics in heat production and transfer. Furthermore, tumor could be highlighted. These results demonstrate that time-resolved thermography is able to support the detection of tumors in a contactless manner without any side effects for the tissue. The intraoperative usage of time-resolved thermography improves the accuracy of tumor resections to prevent irreversible brain damage during surgery.

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Julia Hollmach, Nico Hoffmann, Christian Schnabel, Saskia Küchler, Stephan Sobottka, Matthias Kirsch, Gabriele Schackert, Edmund Koch, and Gerald Steiner "Highly sensitive time-resolved thermography and multivariate image analysis of the cerebral cortex for intrasurgical diagnostics", Proc. SPIE 8565, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics IX, 856550 (8 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2002342

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