Fast estimation of the vascular cooling in RFA based on numerical simulation

We present a novel technique to predict the outcome of an RF ablation, including the vascular cooling effect. The main idea is to separate the problem into a patient independent part, which has to be performed only once for every applicator model and generator setting, and a patient dependent part, which can be performed very fast. The patient independent part fills a look-up table of the cooling effects of blood vessels, depending on the vessel radius and the distance of the RF applicator from the vessel, using a numerical simulation of the ablation process. The patient dependent part, on the other hand, only consists of a number of table look-up processes. The paper presents this main idea, along with the required steps for its implementation. First results of the computation and the related ex-vivo evaluation are presented and discussed. The paper concludes with future extensions and improvements of the approach.