Reconfigurable tapered coaxial slot antenna for hepatic microwave ablation.

Microwave ablation is rapidly being rediscovered and developed for treating many cancers of liver, lung, kidney and bone, as well as arrhythmias and other medical conditions. The microwaves ablate tissue by heating it to cytotoxic temperatures. The microwave antenna design suffers the challenges of effective coupling and penetration into body tissues, uncontrolled power deposition due to applicator construction limitations affecting uniform heating of target region, and narrowband operation leading to mismatch for many patients and detrimental heating. To meet out the requirements of wideband operation and localized lesion reconfigurable linearly tapered slot interstitial wideband antenna has been proposed for working in the 1.38 GHz to 4.31 GHz frequency band. The performance of the antenna is evaluated by using FEM-based HFSS software. The slot height and taper height are reconfigured for parametric analysis achieving maximum impedance matching and spherical ablation zone without requiring any additional adjustable structures. The tapering of the slot in coaxial antenna generates current distribution at the edges of the slot for maximizing specific absorption rate.