With a five-year, $3 million R01 award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), through the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a team of researchers led by Gregory Fischer, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and director of WPI’s Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Laboratory, will test a new, minimally invasive approach to treating brain tumors that promises to accurately destroy malignant tissue while leaving surrounding tissue unaffected. This approach would be a significant improvement over current treatments.
The system will use a robot designed to work within the bore of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to precisely guide a probe through a dime-sized opening in the cranium to the tumor with the aid of real-time MRI images. The probe will destroy the tumor by heating it with interstitial high-intensity focused ultrasound (iHIFU). Developed by industry collaborator Acoustics MedSystems Inc., the device can emit ultrasound energy in a highly directional manner so only malignant tissue is heated, even with irregularly shaped deep-brain tumors. When guided by live MRI images, using a novel robotic manipulator developed by Fischer’s lab and specially designed MRI coils developed by Reinhold Ludwig, PhD, professor of electrical and computer engineering at WPI, the probe will be able to accurately target the tumor.