Derivation of the relationship between the rate of temperature rise and viscoelasticity for constructing a coagulation model for liver radio frequency ablation.

Radio frequency ablation (RFA) is usually conducted using ultrasound (US) imaging to monitor the insertion procedure and the coagulation extent of liver tissue which is contiguous to the RFA electrode. However, when RFA surgery is started, the US image becomes unclear because of water vapor. This disadvantage of RFA can lead to excessive and insufficient RFA thereby diminishing the advantages of the procedure. In the present study, we proposed a simulation system which shows the progress status of coagulation for liver RFA. To derive the coagulation characteristics in liver RFA, we used the viscoelasticity of liver tissue as the coagulation indicator to investigate coagulation development for liver RFA. This paper shows the acquisition procedures for analyzing the relationship between the rate of temperature and viscoelasticity. We measured the complex modulus of porcine liver tissue under different rate of temperature in RFA by controlling the output power. We showed that the viscoelasticity of liver tissue depended on temperature previous temperature increase above 60°C. This result indicates that in RFA, controlling the output power is important to completely coagulate the tumor.