Exploiting Microwave Imaging Methods for Real-Time Monitoring of Thermal Ablation

Abstract EN

Microwave thermal ablation is a cancer treatment that exploits local heating caused by a microwave electromagnetic field to induce coagulative necrosis of tumor cells.

Recently, such a technique has significantly progressed in the clinical practice.

However, its effectiveness would dramatically improve if paired with a noninvasive system for the real-time monitoring of the evolving dimension and shape of the thermally ablated area.

In this respect, microwave imaging can be a potential candidate to monitor the overall treatment evolution in a noninvasive way, as it takes direct advantage from the dependence of the electromagnetic properties of biological tissues from temperature.

This paper explores such a possibility by presenting a proof of concept validation based on accurate simulated imaging experiments, run with respect to a scenario that mimics an ex vivo experimental setup.

In particular, two model-based inversion algorithms are exploited to tackle the imaging task.

These methods provide independent results in real-time and their integration improves the quality of the overall tracking of the variations occurring in the target and surrounding regions.