Experimental Study on K-Band Microwave Monitoring of Laser Ablation in Biological Tissue

Laser ablation is widely used in various oncological applications as a minimally invasive and relatively mild form of cancer therapy. For this purpose, an optical fiber is inserted into the malignant tissue to locally destroy the tumor cells. In this work, a proof of concept for microwave-guided laser ablation in K-band is demonstrated in a laboratory setting. The experimental setup consists of two ultra-wideband antennas connected to a vector network analyzer that face each other in a one dimensional setup. Sausage meat aligned between the transmitting and receiving antenna is locally destroyed using laser energy on the direct Tx-Rx-path. The reflexion and transmission signals in the frequency band from 15-25 GHz have been analyzed through a trend analysis.