Imaging and Image-Guided Thermal Ablation for Oligometastatic Colorectal Cancer Liver Disease

Abstract

Colorectal cancer affects more than 1 million people worldwide, and half of this population develops liver metastases. Image-guided thermal ablation is an acceptable local therapy for the management of oligometastatic colorectal cancer liver disease, in patients who are noneligible for surgery, or present with recurrence after hepatectomy. Continuous technological evolutions, understanding of tumor variability through disease biology and genetics, and optimization of ablation parameters with ablation margin assessment have allowed patients with resectable small-volume disease to be treated by thermal ablation with curative intent. The growing role of imaging and image guidance in thermal ablation for patient selection, procedure planning, tumor targeting, and assessment of technical success is discussed in this article.