FEM simulation of tapered cap floating sleeve antenna for hepatocellular carcinoma therapy

ABSTRACT

Malignant liver tumors are the sixth most common and deadly cancer in the world and the third most common cause of cancer mortality. Hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide with one of the highest mortality rates. Microwave ablation (MWA) is a new, promising, and multidisciplinary technology designed to destroy unhealthy tissue of various natures by radiating electromagnetic waves with microwave antennas. The finite element method (FEM) has been used in the present work to generate the simulated models of tapered cap floating sleeve antenna for validation of its design concepts, because FEM allows modeling of complex geometries that cannot be solved by analytical methods or finite difference models. The performances have been evaluated in terms of objective metrics, ablation zone, antenna matching, power absorption and SAR pattern.

KEYWORDS:

• COMSOL multiphysics
• finite element method
• microwave ablation
• objective metrics
• tapered cap floating sleeve antenna
• tumor

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.