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The therapeutic application of heat is very effective in cancer treatment. Both hyperthermia, i.e., heating to 39–45 °C to induce sensitization to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and thermal ablation, where temperatures beyond 50 °C destroy tumor cells directly are frequently applied in the clinic. Achievement of an effective treatment requires high quality heating equipment, precise thermal dosimetry, and adequate quality assurance. Several types of devices, antennas and heating or power delivery systems have been proposed and developed in recent decades. These vary considerably in technique, heating depth, ability to focus, and in the size of the heating focus. Clinically used heating techniques involve electromagnetic and ultrasonic heating, hyperthermic perfusion and conductive heating. Depending on clinical objectives and available technology, thermal therapies can be subdivided into three broad categories: local, locoregional, or whole body heating. Clinically used local heating techniques include interstitial hyperthermia and ablation, high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), scanned focused ultrasound (SFUS), electroporation, nanoparticle heating, intraluminal heating and superficial heating. Locoregional heating techniques include phased array systems, capacitive systems and isolated perfusion. Whole body techniques focus on prevention of heat loss supplemented with energy deposition in the body, e.g., by infrared radiation. This review presents an overview of clinical hyperthermia and ablation devices used for local, locoregional, and whole body therapy. Proven and experimental clinical applications of thermal ablation and hyperthermia are listed. Methods for temperature measurement and the role of treatment planning to control treatments are discussed briefly, as well as future perspectives for heating technology for the treatment of tumors.

Purpose The goal of this study was to compare intra-procedural radiofrequency (RF) and microwave ablation appearance on non-contrast CT (NCCT) and ultrasound to the zone of pathologic necrosis. Materials and methods Twenty-one 5-min ablations were performed in vivo in swine liver with (1) microwave at 140 W, (2) microwave at 70 W, or (3) RF at 200 W (n = 7 each). CT and US images were obtained simultaneously at 1, 3, and 5 min during ablation and 2, 5, and 10 min post-ablation. Each ablation was sectioned in the plane of the ultrasound image and underwent vital staining to delineate cellular necrosis. CT was reformatted to the same plane as the ultrasound transducer and transverse diameters of gas and hypoechoic/hypoattenuating zones at each time point were measured. CT, ultrasound and gross pathologic diameter measurements were compared using Student’s t-tests and linear regression. Results Visible gas and the hypoechoic zone on US images were more predictive of the pathologic ablation zone than on NCCT images (p

Open-ended coaxial probe spectroscopy is commonly used to determine the dielectric permittivity of biological tissues. However, heterogeneities in the probe sensing region can limit measurement precision and reproducibility. This study presents an analysis of the coaxial probe sensing region to elucidate the effects of heterogeneities on measured permittivity. Coaxial probe spectroscopy at 0.5–20 GHz was numerically simulated while a homogenous background was perturbed with a small inclusion of contrasting permittivity. Shifts in the measured effective permittivity provided a three-dimensional assessment of the probe sensitivity field. Sensitivity was well-approximated by the square of the electric field for each analyzed probe. Smaller probes were more sensitive to heterogeneities throughout their sensing region, but were less sensitive to spectral effects compared to larger probes. The probe sensing diameter was less than 0.5 mm in all directions by multiple metrics. Therefore, small heterogeneities may substantially impact permittivity measurement in biological tissues if located near the probe-tissue interface.