Special issue: Interventional MRI update

摘要

This is the third special issue of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging dedicated to the rapidly developing field of interventional MRI. A comparison with the 1998 and 2000/2001 issues reveals great progress in many aspects of interventional MRI, with numerous advances across the physics, engineering, and clinical aspects of this emerging technology. The growing acceptance of MRI guidance over the past decade has occurred for many reasons, including not only the multiplanar capabilities, unparalleled anatomic definition of soft tissue and bone, and delineation of normal from diseased tissue that MRI provides, but increasingly through exploitation of the many functional parameters of MRI such as perfusion, flow, diffusion, thermal imaging, and the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) effect. Additionally, as society has become more knowledgeable about, and concerned with, the adverse effects of x-ray exposure associated with computed tomographic and x-ray fluoroscopic methods for interventional procedure guidance, the lack of ionizing radiation has become a more important and better-recognized advantage of MRI for the protection of both patients and medical personnel. The concept of interventional MRI has grown to include not only image-guided minimally invasive intervention, but increasingly the use of MRI to provide guidance for open surgical procedures. The evolution of interventional MRI is also tightly coupled to the development of new minimally invasive techniques that cannot be performed otherwise. The aim of MRI guidance in each of these approaches, minimally invasive and open surgery, is to reduce the invasiveness of the therapeutic procedure and hence to improve patient care. The process of developing such new techniques is inherently multidisciplinary. A close collaboration between physicians, physicists, engineers, and many other specialists has been necessary to realize the interventional MRI techniques achieved so far, and should be pursued and intensified in the future in order to invent new solutions for minimally invasive therapy. Current research in interventional MRI is wide-ranging and broad-based, and includes development of instrumentation, visualization techniques and data postprocessing, navigation, robotics, MR thermometry, thermal ablation, biopsy, targeted drug delivery, endovascular therapy, MRI-guided and -monitored stem cell therapy, MRI-guided brachytherapy, and intraoperative MRI. In this issue we have assembled the work of scientists and physicians with profound experience in theory, engineering, and clinical applications. While we have made a sincere attempt to cover the major thrusts of the field, the marked growth and interest in minimally invasive therapy under MRI guidance has made it impossible to cover every clinical application in a single issue. This publication follows a successful ISMRM and ESMRMB endorsed “6th Interventional MRI Symposium” in Leipzig, Germany, that was organized by the guest editors from the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University of Leipzig, Germany, the Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and the Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. From more than 100 oral and poster presentations we selected cutting-edge research for inclusion in this special issue. The next of this biannual symposia will take place in the fall of 2008 in Baltimore and again will serve as a forum for presentation of the latest results; we are looking forward to seeing more evidence of the advances and innovations that have thus far been the hallmarks of interventional MRI. We extend our most sincere gratitude to Dr. Leon Partain, the Editor of JMRI, for his continuous support of this project and for many stimulating discussions during its genesis. It is our hope that the articles selected for this special issue will help to stimulate, moti