Modeling the temperature dependence of thermal conductivity: Developing a system for robot-assisted RFA therapy

Radio frequency ablation (RFA), which is an important method for treating nonresectable and metastatic liver tumors, has increasingly been used over the past few years. On the positive side, RFA treatment is minimally invasive. On the negative side, the exact dimensions of the coagulated zone are not clearly visible in medical diagnostic images. A practical temperature distribution simulator is needed to overcome this deficiency. To construct such a simulator for RFA, the relation between temperature dependence and thermal conductivity must be known. To determine this relation, a steady-comparative method in- vitro experiment was conducted with a hog liver. The experiment confirmed that the thermal conductivity of the hog liver was certainly temperature dependent. Moreover, we were able to model the relation between thermal conductivity and temperature dependence. It clearly is important to consider the temperature dependence of thermal conductivity when constructing a practical simulation for RFA.