Assessment of Burn Depths on Organs by Microwave

Monitoring the burn depth in heart during ablation of atrial fibrillation is a real challenge for the next years. The influence of the burning effect on the dielectric properties is not very developed and represents a growing interest in terms of characterization in medicine. Here, the microwave characterization of biological tissues in a liquid medium is performed through an open-ended coaxial probe placed directly against each sample. The evolution of the relative variation of the reflection coefficient is correlated with the depth of burned tissues. Measurements are performed on bovine muscles and pork hearts. Results are similar for both tissues.