Case Study: University of Oxford achieves real-time HIFU tumour monitoring with National Instruments

Improving Ultrasonic Tumour Therapy With Passive Acoustic Detection

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford needed an economical and effective system for real-time monitoring during high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) surgery for cancerous tumors. Their challenge was to acquire data from a custom 32-channel ultrasonic hydrophone array at a very high sample rate to provide critical feedback to surgeons and improve treatment safety.

National Instruments provided a solution using NI PXI Express hardware and LabVIEW FPGA software. This combination allowed for rapid development and the simultaneous acquisition of data from all 32 channels at 50 MS/s. The National Instruments platform delivered a scalable system that provided complete data control and enabled real-time monitoring, which reduces the chance of overtreatment, improves patient safety, and paves the way for future advancements with more complex arrays.

Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford

Christian Coviello

Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford