AN INTEGRATED PROBE FOR MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING MONITORED SKIN CRYOSURGERY

Cryosurgery of the skin is a common treatment for both benign and mali gnant skin cancers. Monitoring the depth of the frozen lesion during c ryosurgery, either by estimation based on the lateral spread of freeze at the skin surface or via thermocouples, may be inaccurate because o f the heterogeneous nature of tissue. We describe an integrated cryosu rgical probe and magnitude resonance imaging probe which we use to obt ain high resolution MR images of skin, subcutaneous muscle and the fro zen lesion during cryosurgey.