High-Frequency Microwave Ablation Antennas for Minimally-Invasive Treatment of Cancer

Microwave ablation (MWA) employs an interstitial antenna to deliver microwave energy directly into a cancerous tumor and heat it to cytotoxic temperatures. This thermoablative approach to cancer treatment is a promising alternative to surgical resection. MWA avoids the high costs, invasiveness, prolonged use of general anesthesia and other risks, and long recovery times associated with surgery.

In this talk, Prof. Behdad will present the results of his recent investigation in the area of high-frequency MWA and discuss the potential clinical benefits of this approach. He will also present several new types of interstitial antennas that his group has recently developed, which can considerably reduce the invasiveness of microwave ablation as a potential treatment for cancer and offer capabilities such as directional heating or local sensing of the tissue properties that are not available from conventional MWA antenna designs.

Nader Behdad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also named the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellow in 2016.

Dr. Behdad's research expertise is in the area of applied electromagnetics. In particular, his research interests include electrically-small antennas, antenna arrays, antennas for biomedical applications, biomedical applications of RF/microwaves, periodic structures, frequency selective surfaces, passive high-power microwave devices, metamaterials, and biomimetics and biologically inspired systems in electromagnetics.

He is the recipient of the UW-Madison Vilas Associates Award, the R. W. P. King Prize Paper Award, and the Piergiorgio L. E. Uslenghi Letters Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He received an NSF CAREER award, a Young Investigator Award (YIA) from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and a YIA from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. His graduate students were the recipients of the ten different awards/recognitions at the IEEE Pulsed Power & Plasma Science, IEEE AP-S/URSI Symposium, and the Antenna Applications Symposium.

Nader Behdad received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2000 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Michigan in 2003 and 2006, respectively.