Experimental and Numerical Analysis in Vitro with a Water-Cooled Microwave Ablation Antenna

This paper gives a comparison of results obtained from numerical simulation and experimental measurements made in vitro pig liver with a water-cooled microwave ablation antenna. An axis-symmetric finite element model was developed to simulate the temperature field based on the pennes bioheat equation, in which the convection heat transfer of the cooling water was involved. The temperature curves and ablation area in the experiments corresponded well with simulated ones in vitro. The results demonstrated that computer-aided simulation of microwave thermal distribution is an accurate and reliable method which can instruct the clinical operation and surgical planning of microwave ablation in practice.