Microwave thermal ablation is a cancer treatment that exploits local heating caused by a microwave electromagnetic field to induce\ncoagulative necrosis of tumor cells. Recently, such a technique has significantly progressed in the clinical practice. However, its\neffectivenesswould dramatically improve if paired with a noninvasive systemfor the real-timemonitoring of the evolving dimension\nand shape of the thermally ablated area. In this respect, microwave imaging can be a potential candidate to monitor the overall\ntreatment evolution in a noninvasive way, as it takes direct advantage from the dependence of the electromagnetic properties of\nbiological tissues from temperature. This paper explores such a possibility by presenting a proof of concept validation based on\naccurate simulated imaging experiments, run with respect to a scenario that mimics an ex vivo experimental setup. In particular,\ntwo model-based inversion algorithms are exploited to tackle the imaging task. These methods provide independent results in realtime\nand their integration improves the quality of the overall tracking of the variations occurring in the target and surrounding\nregions.
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