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Abstract The drive in modern medicine is towards the development of treatments and techniques that minimize intervention to the patient and length of hospital stay. Thermal ablation therapies provide a minimally invasive approach to cancer therapy that is gaining rapid clinical acceptance. Of the available ablative techniques, HIFU is the least invasive and, in many ways, the most attractive. As a noninvasive method, HIFU has a potential application in the treatment of patients with breast lesions either benign or malignant. Two main mechanisms are involved in the HIFU ablation: a thermal effect and a mechanical effect leading to its effect on tumors. On the other hand despite its promising noninvasive and nonionizing effects in the therapy of malignancies the application of HIFU has certain limitations, as an US technique any artifacts related to US, such as in US imaging, would apply to HIFU as well, such as acoustic shadowing, reverberation, and refraction are a disadvantage in HIFU technique, also lack of reliable thermometry to control heat production is another major burden of HIFU but recently newer systems a sonographic thermometry is being actively investigated and incorporated. |