Opened-tip applicator and ex vivo experimental results for microwave breast cancer ablation

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the main health hazard that threatening women life all over the world. Not only her own daily life, but also her own family whom suffering from this poor fate. Besides from a breast resection, microwave ablation is also another effective therapeutic technique for glandular tissue cancer treatment due to its minimal invasive maneuver. In this paper, we propose a study of an opened-tip applicator ablation for breast cancer therapy. The investigation was preliminary performed by using finite element method to analyze a characteristic of antenna and to simulate a 2.45 GHz electromagnetic wave phenomenon in living tissue then following by ex vivo experiment with female swine breast. In term of FEM simulation, full 3D distribution pattern of SAR, temperature and also estimated destructive tissue area in a complicated CAD model of cancerous breast was analyzed. Real ablation with an ultrasound-guided applicator insertion was implemented to confirm an effective result. This study not only shows a promising result but also encourage us to develop an advance microwave ablation system in near future. © 2012 IEEE.