Microwave antennas for thermal therapy: Several approaches for clinical applications

Abstract

Microwave energy is one of the heating sources used for thermal therapy of cancer. The thermal therapy means the hyperthermia and the coagulation therapy. In the hyperthermic treatment, the target tumor is heated up to 42-45 °C and in the coagulation therapy, it must be heated 60 °C or more to generate the tissue coagulation. In this manner, although therapeutic temperatures of both schemes are different, there are several similarities between them especially from the engineering aspects. Therefore, this paper describes the fundamental characteristics of microwave inside the biological tissue and two types of heating schemes for the hyperthermic treatments. In addition, the actual treatment by use of newly developed microwave antennas is introduced.