Liver and pancreatic cancers are among the most devastating cancers in the world. Even though their incidence is much lower than other carcinomas such as prostate or breast cancers, they are the second leading cancer-related death. Percutaneous ablations, such as radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or cryoablation (CrA) have shown their efficacy, in particular for Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)located far from vital structures such as biliary tree or hepatic vein. However, HCC tumors located near vital blood vessels and pancreatic cancers still suffer from a lack of efficient non surgical therapies. To overcome this therapeutic impasse, electroporation-based ablations (EPAs) combined with immunotherapy hold great promises. However these new ablation techniques are currently underused due to their technical complexity, and the lack of quantitative criteria of assessment. Our aim is to develop novel digital technologies to assist interventional radiologists performing EPAs for deep seated tumors, and particularly for liver and pancreatic cancers. On the one hand, the computational assessment of EPAs will assist the operator during the ablation procedure, providing a real-time evaluation of the treated region. On the other hand, novel numerical criteria of the immune response to combinatorial EPAs and immunotherapy will provide an early quantification of the immune response after EPA. Our projects paves the way of the digital optimisation of patient-dependent and evolutive percutaneous ablations combined with immunotherapy
Notre objectif est de développer de nouvelles technologies numériques pour aider les radiologues interventionnels à réaliser des EPA pour les tumeurs profondes, et en particulier pour les cancers du foie et du pancréas. D'une part, l'évaluation numérique des EPA aidera l'opérateur pendant la procédure d'ablation, en fournissant une évaluation en temps réel de la région traitée. D'autre part, de nouveaux critères numériques de la réponse immunitaire aux EPA combinatoires et à l'immunothérapie fourniront une quantification précoce de la réponse immunitaire après EPA.

Nos projets ouvrent la voie à l'optimisation numérique des ablations percutanées évolutives et dépendantes du patient, combinées à l'immunothérapie.