Optical fiber sensors-based temperature distribution measurement in ex vivo radiofrequency ablation with submillimeter resolution

Edoardo Gino Macchi, Daniele Tosi, Giovanni Braschi, Mario Gallati, Alfredo Cigada, Giorgio Busca, Elfed Lewis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Radiofrequency thermal ablation (RFTA) induces a high-temperature field in a biological tissue having steep spatial (up to 6°C/mm) and temporal (up to 1°C/s) gradients. Applied in cancer care, RFTA produces a localized heating, cytotoxic for tumor cells, and is able to treat tumors with sizes up to 3 to 5 cm in diameter. The online measurement of temperature distribution at the RFTA point of care has been previously carried out with miniature thermocouples and optical fiber sensors, which exhibit problems of size, alteration of RFTA pattern, hysteresis, and sensor density worse than 1 sensor/cm. In this work, we apply a distributed temperature sensor (DTS) with a submillimeter spatial resolution for the monitoring of RFTA in porcine liver tissue. The DTS demodulates the chaotic Rayleigh backscattering pattern with an interferometric setup to obtain the real-time temperature distribution. A measurement chamber has been set up with the fiber crossing the tissue along different diameters. Several experiments have been carried out measuring the space-time evolution of temperature during RFTA. The present work showcases the temperature monitoring in RFTA with an unprecedented spatial resolution and is exportable to in vivo measurement; the acquired data can be particularly useful for the validation of RFTA computational models.

Original languageEnglish
Article number117004
Pages (from-to)117004
JournalJournal of Biomedical Optics
Volume19
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2014

Keywords

  • Distributed temperature sensor
  • Ex vivo liver tissue
  • Fiber optic sensors
  • Radiofrequency thermal ablation
  • Rayleigh backscattering

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