Adaptive Microwave Ablation System for Localized Tumor Treatment

Though microwave ablation (MWA) technology has shown obvious advantages, it has the problem that the ablation zone is not sufficiently localized. As a result, normal tissue might be inevitably damaged during the ablation process. To solve this problem, the comprehensive MWA theory is first analyzed in this article, and then, a frequency-adaptive ablation approach is proposed and verified by simulations. Accordingly, a frequency-adaptive MWA system for optimizing the ablation zone is developed. As the tissue’s electromagnetic properties change with the increase in temperature during the ablation, the proposed system is designed to monitor the working performance of the antenna in real time and to automatically select the optimum working frequency, simultaneously. The ablation-controlling system is designed as an integrated controller so that the overall size and fabrication cost are obviously reduced. Preliminary validation experiments are performed on the system, which shows that the proposed system is capable of delivering stable power output from 0.5 to 3 GHz and creating a highly localized ablation zone. The proposed MWA system is expected to be a dedicated device for the treatment of tumors.