FEM modeling of radio frequency ablation in the spinal column

Radio frequency ablation is an established minimally-invasive method to treat tumors in organs such as liver and kidney. Several methods for simulation and planning of such a procedure are described in the literature. Since these are usually based on a simplified model of the target structure, their application on more complex structures like the spinal column is not sufficient. In this paper we present a finite element method (FEM) based simulation of radio frequency ablation of a vertebra metastasis using diagnostic MR images of the spinal column.