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An In Silico Exploration of Aberration-Corrected Transspinal Focused Ultrasound Using Zero Echo Time MRI.

David Martin,M. O'Reilly

Published 2026 in Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology

ABSTRACT

This study numerically assesses the feasibility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-corrected transspinal focused ultrasound (FUS). Eleven ex vivo thoracic vertebrae were imaged with computed tomography (CT) and zero echo time (ZTE) magnetic resonance imaging. ZTE images were converted to pseudo-CT (pCT) with a linear fit from the literature (-2085×ZTE+2329). Transspinal focusing was simulated with a 256-element array (400 kHz, focal full-width-at-half-maximum ∼20 mm axial, 4 mm lateral) using five correction methods: no correction; pCT-corrected, homogeneous acoustic properties; pCT-corrected, heterogeneous properties; CT-corrected, homogeneous properties; and CT-corrected, heterogeneous properties (gold standard). Pressure fields generated using each correction method were evaluated against the gold standard. Compared to no correction, heterogeneous pCT-corrected focusing reduced mean spatial maximum shift (1.5 ± 2.0 mm vs. 3.5 ± 4.1 mm), increased Sørensen-Dice similarity of the 50% contour (0.75 ± 0.10 vs. 0.57 ± 0.18), and improved the change in driving efficiency relative to the gold standard (-12% ± 11% vs. -21% ± 25%). pCT-corrected with homogeneous properties performed similarly to the heterogeneous case. CT-corrected with homogeneous properties approached the gold standard, with a mean spatial shift of 0.8 ± 1.7 mm, Dice coefficient of 0.91 ± 0.06, and little change in driving efficiency (1% ± 3%). MR-corrected focusing using ZTE-derived acoustic properties outperformed uncorrected focusing but did not match gold-standard CT-corrected focusing. Similarities in the performance of heterogeneous versus homogeneous pCT correction, along with the strong performance of homogeneous CT-corrected focusing, suggest that accurate morphological representation of the spine is key to accurate MR-corrected transspinal focused ultrasound.

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