DESIGN OF A VIVALDI ANTENNA FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING SYSTEMS OF ABLATION MONITORING

Thermal ablation treatment of cancer is increasingly adopted in the clinical practice, being minimally invasive and highly specific. However, a significant drawback of the technique is the lack of effective imaging modalities for monitoring the changes undergoing in the thermally treated tissue. In this respect, microwave imaging has been proposed as a possible candidate, owing to its portability, low-cost, non-ionizing nature, and capability to detect changes in dielectric properties of tissues induced by the temperature. In the microwave imaging system, the antenna is the most crucial part because it dictates the electromagnetic power delivered to the human body. In this paper, an antipodal Vivaldi antenna was designed for microwave imaging systems for ablation monitoring. The results of this study pave the way to an experimental assessment of the potential of microwave imaging as a modality to monitor thermal ablation treatments