A system for assisting a surgeon in placing at least one ablation device into a treatment region of a patient, where the system includes at least one computer system having a display, a user interface and software, is described. The system uses patient image data of the treatment region to generate an image of the treatment region on the display and identifies the treatment region to ablate with a target. Tissue properties of the treatment region are identified and used to perform thermal modeling. Treatment parameters are generated and an ablation zone is calculated. A computer system display is generated showing (a) the number of ablation devices required to ablate the treatment region and the location and orientation of each ablation device in the treatment region and (b) the ablation zone.