Study on the effectiveness of infrared thermal imaging method in evaluating microwave ablation curative effect

Aiming at the problem that in microwave tumor ablation surgery, there is a lack of 2D curative effect evaluation method during and after clinical operations. This article discusses whether the infrared thermal imaging method can be used as an effective 2D evaluation method. This paper conducted two sets of experiments to validate whether the infrared thermal imaging method is effective and whether it can be used in real-time monitoring. In the experiments, microwave ablation system is used to conduct in vitro porcine liver ablation with different times and powers. In the first set, the size and shape of the ablation area are measured after the ablation time is completed, then actual ablation results, infrared thermal imaging results and simulation results are compared. In the second set, the infrared thermal imaging results are captured every minute during the ablation process, then compared with simulation results at each minute. Results show that the size and shape of the ablation area from the actual ablation experiments, the infrared thermal imaging method and the simulation are consistent, also the temperature change and the distinction of the different ablation zones are also consistent. In addition, second set experiment results are consistent with the intraoperative results. These results validate that the infrared thermal imaging method can be used as an effective real-time intraoperative and postoperative curative 2D evaluation method.