Key Points
- Physicists with expertise in the technology recently published recommendations for how to report treatment parameters when conducting either preclinical or clinical studies using focused ultrasound.
- Widespread use of these guidelines will assist in moving the field forward more quickly.
- The recommendations are divided into clinical and preclinical study sections.
Recommendations for Reporting Therapeutic Ultrasound Treatment Parameters
Physicists with expertise in focused ultrasound technology recently published recommendations for how to report treatment parameters when conducting either preclinical or clinical studies using focused ultrasound. Widespread use of these guidelines will assist in moving the field forward more quickly, because when the technical parameters of a treatment are uniformly reported with specific details, studies can more easily be compared, repeated, and validated.
“Similar guidelines were initially published on the Focused Ultrasound Foundation’s website,” said Frédéric Padilla, PhD, the Foundation’s Research Director for Applied Physics. “Then we asked Dr. ter Haar to help revise and improve them, but this is a truly a community effort, because after we put the first draft of the guidelines on our website for comments, the community all contributed to create this final publication.”
The recommendations are divided into clinical and preclinical study sections, with each section outlining minimum, intermediate, and optimal reporting requirements, to account for the disparities in expertise and access to equipment between sites.
While clinical studies may not always have access to detailed characterization of the focused ultrasound system, and therefore may only be able to report on technical details of the clinical system as provided by the manufacturer and on the treatment protocol, it is recommended that all preclinical studies, and clinical studies when possible, report detailed information on treatment parameters and on the transducer and acoustic field.
The authors hope that the information is of use to clinicians, researchers, ethical review boards, funding entities, and journal editors and reviewers.