Monitoring of Microwave Ablation treatment with Electrical Impedance Tomography

Abstract

Microwave ablation (MWA) is an increasingly used thermal therapy to treat cancer, operating typically at frequencies around 2.45 GHz. Higher temperatures and treatment of larger volumes can be achieved compared to radiofrequency ablation, not to mention the absence of the heat-sink effect. However, a simple and inexpensive method to assess the treated area with MWA in real time has not been implemented, yet. In the present computational study we show that it is feasible to use electrical impedance tomography to evaluate the treatment volume, taking advantage of the changes in tissue conductivity with temperature.