About the Interstitial Microwave Cancer Ablation: Principles, Advantages and Challenges

This article presents a review of the interstitial microwave cancer ablation. Microwave cancer ablation is an effective technique for the cancer therapy using the electromagnetic radiations in the microwave range. The idea behind using the microwave electromagnetic radiations in cancer therapy is basically based on dielectric heating of the cancerous tissues until the death of the infected cells. This article reviews the theory of operation of the microwave cancer ablation technique with overview of the electrical properties of the biological tissues as they are key parameters to study the behavior of the cancer ablation process. Advantages of microwave cancer ablation technique over the other techniques especially its most related one, i.e., the radiofrequency cancer ablation are highlighted. Although the microwave cancer ablation has attained high attention by the researchers, many of challenges which degrade its performance still exist. The paper discusses the challenges of the microwave cancer ablation and highlights the efforts done by the researchers to tackle them. Different antenna structures utilized for microwave cancer ablation are presented with mention of their behavior, advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, some of the most recent progresses in the microwave cancer ablation field are presented.