Thermometry and Post-Treatment Dimension Analysis of Microwave Ablation on Liver, Kidney and Lung

This study evaluates the thermal effects of the Dophi™ M150E Microwave Ablation System. Microwave Ablation (MWA) is a minimally invasive technique adopted to treat liver, kidney, lung and bone tumors. Experiments were performed on ex vivo animal organs, i.e., bovine liver, porcine kidney and bovine lung, for measuring the size of the ablated area and analyzing the temperature reached within the tissue. The experiments were conducted with two power-time setups: 100 W -10 minutes and 50 W -10 minutes for a total of 18 experiments. The size of the ablation regions obtained with MWA was measured to evaluate the sphericity index. The temperature monitoring was carried out with two arrays of 40 fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) placed at 1 and 2 cm from the MW antenna. Overall, results regarding size were in accordance with the data provided by the manufacturer; a maximum temperature rise not exeeding 80°C was measured at 1 cm from the MW antenna, with some difference among organs due to their peculiar physical properties. The results provided with this work are useful to clinicians in order to have more information on the thermal effects of MWA on different organs of interest for interventional oncology applications.