Study on the relationship between reduced scattering coefficient and Young’s modulus of tumors in microwave ablation

Abstract

Background and objective

In the clinical treatment of tumors using microwave ablation (MWA), although temperature can be used as an important reference index for evaluating the curative effect of ablation, it cannot fully reflect the biological activity status of tumor tissue during thermal ablation. Finding multi-parameter comprehensive evaluation factors to achieve real-time evaluation of therapeutic effects has become the key for precise ablation. More and more scholars use the reduced scattering coefficient (${\mathrm{\mu }}_{\mathrm{s}}^{\mathrm{\prime }}$) and Young’s modulus (E) to evaluate the treatment outcomes of MWA. However, the intrinsic relationship between these parameters is unclear. This paper aims to investigate the specific relationship between ${\mu }_{\mathrm{s}}^{\mathrm{\text{'}}}$ and E during MWA.

Material and methods

The MWA experiment was conducted on porcine liver in vitro, the two-parameter simultaneous acquisition system was designed to obtain the reduced scattering coefficient and Young’s modulus of the liver tissue during MWA. The relationship between reduced scattering coefficient and Young’s modulus was investigated.

Results

It is found that the trend of change of ${\mathrm{\mu }}_{\mathrm{s}}^{\mathrm{\text{'}}}$ is very similar to E in the process of MWA, i.e. first increasing and then reaching a steady state, and in some experiments there are synchronous changes. Based on this, the quantitative relationship between E–${\mathrm{\mu }}_{\mathrm{s}}^{\mathrm{\text{'}}}\mathrm{ }$ is established, enabling the quantitative estimation of Young’s modulus of liver tissue based on reduced scattering coefficient. The maximum absolute error is 29.37 kPa and the minimum absolute error is 0.88 kPa.

Conclusion

This study contributes to the further establishment of a multi-parameter MWA effectiveness evaluation model. It is also valuable for clinically evaluating the ablation outcomes of tumor in real time.

Keywords:

• MWA
• reduced scattering coefficient
• Young’s modulus

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Project Funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China [81827803, 81727804], National Natural Science Foundation of China [61875085] and the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province [KYCX19_0173]. Meanwhile, the authors are very grateful to the Lauterbur Biomedical Imaging Research Center of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for supporting the experiment.