Monitoring of Liver RF Ablation Using UWB Radar: A Numerical Study

Thermal ablation is a well-known method used in interventional radiology to treat cancer. The main objective of this study was a numerical investigation of RF liver ablation monitoring with the UWB radar. The eight UWB bowtie antennas were uniformly distributed around the liver area. The antennas were excited by the Gaussian pulse with frequencies ranging from 1 to 6 GHz. The catheter model (with diameter of 2 mm) was placed into the tumor position within the liver. The three concentric ellipsoids-shaped ablation zones were placed around the catheter to simulate the real clinical situation From the recorded signals the clutter was subtracted and results were visualized using the “Delay and Sum” algorithm. A total three different tumor positions were considered within our study. This numerical analysis demonstrates the potential of the method to continuously monitor the ablation process using UWB radar. The ablation zones of three tumor positions were successfully reconstructed with a mean spatial precision lower than 2 mm. The results suggest that the UWB radar monitoring is applicable for continuous RF ablation monitoring with accuracy that is sufficient for therapeutic purposes.