Abstract:
The present study analyzes the efficacy of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of breast tumor with different
breast density levels {viz., extremely dense (ED), heterogeneously dense (HD), scattered fibroglandular
(SF) and predominantly fatty (PF)}. A spherical tumor of 1.5 cm has been embedded at various locations
in the heterogeneous three-dimensional numerical breast model to represent in situ early stage tumor.
Temperature-controlled RFA has been performed by incorporating the proportional-integral-derivative
(PID) controller. A thermo-electric analysis has been done to obtain the temperature distribution and
the ablation volume by incorporating the coupled electric field distribution, the Pennes bioheat and
the first-order Arrhenius rate equations. The effects of temperature-dependent changes in electrical
and thermal conductivities of heterogeneous multi-layer breast models have been considered. The
non-linear piecewise model of blood perfusion has been incorporated to achieve better correlation with
the clinical RFA. The numerical results have been validated with the in vitro experimental results. The
results revealed that, the breast density compositions significantly affect the treatment outcomes in
terms of ablation volume and temperature distribution. It has been found that, the breast with lower fatty
tissue requires significantly less time to attain complete tumor necrosis as compared to the breast with
higher fat content.
