Physics in medicine and biology
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Minimally invasive therapies (such as radiofrequency ablation) are becoming more commonly used in the United States for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinomas and liver metastases. Unfortunately, these procedures suffer from high recurrence rates of hepatocellular carcinoma ( approximately 34-55%) or metastases following ablation therapy. The ability to perform real-time temperature imaging while a patient is undergoing radiofrequency ablation could provide a significant reduction in these recurrence rates. ⋯ Both sound speed and thermal expansion changes of the tissue-mimicking material were measured experimentally and utilized to generate the calibration curve relating temperature to the displacement gradient. Temperature maps were obtained, and specific regions-of-interest on the temperature maps were compared to invasive temperatures obtained using fiber-optic temperature probes at the same location. Temperature elevation during a radiofrequency ablation procedure on the phantom was successfully tracked to within +/-0.5 degrees C.
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This study investigated the relationship between the specific absorption rate and temperature elevation in an anatomically-based model named NORMAN for exposure to radio-frequency far fields in the ICNIRP guidelines (1998 Health Phys. 74 494-522). The finite-difference time-domain method is used for analyzing the electromagnetic absorption and temperature elevation in NORMAN. In order to consider the variability of human thermoregulation, parameters for sweating are derived and incorporated into a conventional sweating formula. ⋯ The thermal time constant of blood temperature elevation was 23 min and 52 min for a man with a lower and a higher sweating rate, respectively, which is longer than the average time of the SAR in the ICNIRP guidelines. Thus, the whole-body average SAR required for blood temperature elevation of 1 degrees C was 4.5 W kg(-1) in the model of a human with the lower sweating coefficients for 60 min exposure. From a comparison of this value with the basic restriction in the ICNIRP guidelines of 0.4 W kg(-1), the safety factor was 11.