Temperature-Dependent Electrical Characterization of a Thermally Sensitive Hepatic Tumor Phantom

Phantom design is a critical task in biomedical device development which gives a strong indication of validity before going for animal/human testing. Microwave ablation therapy is no exception. The temperature change in the target tissue is measured in thermal phantoms after being estimated with electromagnetic and thermal simulations. Establishing a visual feedback mechanism during thermal therapy would bring the testing process closer to more real-time testing. Here we propose a semi-transparent polyacrylamide gel-based hepatic tumor phantom at 2.45 GHz of which absorbance changes as the temperature increases. It is shown that the phantom can be optimized such that the absorbance converges to its maximum value at a specific target temperature value. The temperature-dependent permittivity and conductivity values and temperature-dependent absorbance values of the proposed phantom are given.