The current challenge in the field of thermo-ablative treatments of tumors is to achieve a balance between complete destruction of malignant cells and safeguarding of the surrounding healthy tissue. Blood perfusion plays a key role for thermal ablation success, especially in the case of highly vascularized organs like liver. This work aims at monitoring the temperature within perfused swine liver undergoing laser ablation (LA). Temperature was measured through seven arrays of Fiber Bragg Grating sensors (FBGs) around the laser applicator. To mimic reality, blood perfusion within the ex-vivo liver was simulated using artificial vessels. The influence of blood perfusion on LA was carried out by comparing the temperature profiles in two different spatial configurations of vessels and fibers. The proposed setup permitted to accurately measure the heat propagation in real-time with a temperature resolution of 0.1 °C and to observe a relevant tissue cooling near to the vessel up to 65%.
Bones are a frequent site of metastases that cause intolerable cancer-related pain in 90% of patients, making their quality of life poor. In this scenario, being able to treat bone oncology patients by means of minimally invasive techniques can be crucial to avoid surgery-related risks and decrease hospitalization times. The use of microwave ablation (MWA) is gaining broad clinical acceptance to treat bone tumors. It is worth investigating temperature variations in bone tissue undergoing MWA because the clinical outcomes can be inferred from this parameter. Several feasibility studies have been performed, but an experimental analysis of the temperature trends reached into the bone during the MWA has not yet been assessed. In this work, a multi-point temperature study along the bone structure during such treatment is presented. The study has been carried out on ex vivo bovine femur and tibia, subjected to MWA. An overall of 40 measurement points covering a large sensing area was obtained for each configuration. Temperature monitoring was performed by using 40 fiber Bragg grating (FBGs) sensors (four arrays each housing 10 FBGs), inserted into the bones at specific distances to the microwave antenna. As result, the ability of this experimental multi-point monitoring approach in tracking temperature variations within bone tissue during MWA treatments was shown. This study lays the foundations for the design of a novel approach to study the effects of MWA on bone tumors. As consequence, the MWA treatment settings could be optimized in order to maximize the treatment effects of such a promising clinical application, but also customized for the specific tumor and patient.
Temperature mapping is a key asset in supporting the clinician during thermal ablation (TA) treatment of tumors without adding additional risk to the TA procedure. Herein we report our experiments on multidimensional thermal mapping during radio frequency (RF) thermal ablation treatments of an ex-vivo animal organ. The temperature was monitored using several arrays of fiber Bragg gratings properly positioned around the RF applicator. The results show the effectiveness of our proposed method at assessing the TA probe depth and demonstrating how the insertion depth directly influences the maximum temperature and the treated area of the radio frequency ablation.
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