Characterization of ex-vivo ovine lung tissue in relation to density at microwave frequencies

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide1. Recently, advances in lung navigation technologies have been facilitating progress in minimally-invasive thermal ablative treatments for targeting lung malignancies 2. For the success of microwave thermal ablation, the accurate knowledge of the electromagnetic response of the target, i.e. the tissue’s dielectric properties, is paramount. Nevertheless, lung tissue is the least characterised among the biological tissues, in particular above 100MHz 3. Lung tissue is an heterogenous tissue, with variable air content, resulting in a noticeable variability of the measured properties. In this work, the dielectric properties of ex vivo ovine lung tissue are investigated and correlated with the tissue density, used to estimate the air content.