Developrnent of a Robotic Surgical System of Thermal Ablation and Microwave Coagulation

The microwave ablation processes are currently used for minimally-invasive interventions on the liver, kidney, lung and other organs using a laparoscopic approach. There is a wide scientific literature that confirmed the usefulness of this technique [1]–[4], focused on the results and clinical expectations of these processes, describing in detail all aspects of the methodology with the aid of numerical simulations or experiments on ex-vivo and in-vivo tissues. In this article, we explain the following steps of our research: •optimize the MW device already described in [5]; •develop the system management for laparoscopically use; •optimize the thermal ablation procedure on in vivo tissue during the intervention of liver resection in order to reduce blood loss. •assess the thermal stability and reliability of the new device when it operates in sequential pulse mode with a 50% duty cycle. The thermal analysis and the experimental data acquired with a thermal imaging camera shows that the heating profiles obtained by applying a MW input power of 120 W for 30 seconds are compatible with the clinical needs of obtaining very localized thermal ablations with a suitable coagulation profile without damaging the surrounding healthy tissues and reducing at the same time the blood losses during a hepatic lobe resection.