Actively Cooled, Alumina Filled Cylindrical Waveguide for Microwave Ablation

Microwave ablation is one of the most common percutaneous ablation techniques used in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and has shown improved patient outcomes compared to radio frequency (RF) ablation, but it still suffers from difficulties such as gallbladder injury when the tumor is near the gallbladder. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using an actively cooled, aluminum oxide filled, cylindrical waveguide as a proposed concept for use as a precision microwave ablation probe to prevent unintentional damage, while retaining the rapid localized heating that allows microwave ablation devices to avoid the heat sink problem faced by RF ablation.