Feasibility Study of Microsecond Pulsed Microwave Ablation using a Minimally Invasive Antenna

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that microsecond pulsed microwave ablation can produce effective, localized tissue ablation zones comparable to continuous wave methods, with potential for real-time monitoring using thermoacoustic signals.

Contribution

It establishes the feasibility of microsecond pulsed MWA with high peak power, showing comparable ablation zones to CW MWA and enabling future real-time imaging integration.

Findings

Pulsed MWA achieves ablation zones similar to CW MWA.

Pulsed MWA can withstand peak powers up to 25 kW.

Temperatures exceed 100°C in bovine liver during pulsed MWA.

Abstract

In this study we established the feasibility of producing localized ablation zones using microsecond pulsed microwave ablation (MWA) as an alternative to conventional continuous wave (CW) MWA. We verified that a thin floating-sleeve dipole ablation probe can withstand pulsed power delivery with peak powers as high as 25 kW, with pulse widths on the order of 1 us. We conducted MWA experiments in egg white using CW and pulsed modes of operation and found that ablation zones achieved via pulsed MWA are comparable in dimension to those created via CW MWA when the average power and procedure duration are equivalent. Finally, we performed pulsed MWA experiments in bovine liver and confirmed that pulsed MWA consistently produces large, localized ablation zones and temperatures that exceed 100{\deg}C. Establishing the feasibility of pulsed MWA opens the opportunity for developing a coupled MWA treatment and imaging system using pulsed MWA and microwave-induced thermoacoustic signals for real-time monitoring of MWA.