title: Optimal applicator placement in hepatic radiofrequency ablation on the basis of rare data.
abstract: In this paper, a numerical procedure to determine an optimal applicator placement for hepatic radiofrequency ablation incorporating uncertain material parameters is presented. The main focus is set on the treatment of subjective and rare data-based information. For this purpose, we employ the theory of fuzzy sets and model uncertain parameters as fuzzy quantities. While fuzzy modelling has been established in structural engineering in the recent past, it is novel in biomedical engineering. Incorporating fuzzy quantities within an optimisation task is basically innovative. In our context, fuzzy modelling allows us to determine an optimal applicator placement that maximises the therapy success under the given uncertainty conditions. The applicability of our method is demonstrated by means of an example case.
authors.affiliation: Fraunhofer MEVIS, Institute for Medical Image Computing, Bremen, Germany. tim.kroeger@mevis.fraunhofer.de
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kröger
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pannier
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kaliske
authors.forename: Inga
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Altrogge
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Graf
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Preusser
mesh_terms: D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000379:methods