Development of a conformal woven fabric antenna for wearable breast hyperthermia

Abstract

Abstract Breast hyperthermia is a non-invasive cancer treatment, where breast temperature is mildly elevated by a localized electromagnetic (EM) irradiation to deactivate and damage cancer cells. The emerging needs associated with this medical modality include the development of a highly wearable microwave applicator with a low power requirement to enable a more patient-friendly and continuous hyperthermia therapy. As a potential solution, we propose a textile antenna that consists of a copper-plated woven polyester fabric as a radiating patch and a ground plane and a woven polyester fabric as a dielectric substrate and a padding layer. The porous nature of these textile materials enables construction of a lightweight and flexible antenna with a low dielectric loss for a more comfortable hyperthermia treatment. By incorporating a synthetic breast tissue for a model study, the temperature rises were measured to be 3.3 °C and 1.9 °C at 5 mm and 15 mm depths, respectively, after 15 min of heating (input power of 1 W). This suggests that the textile-based approach could be an effective solution for comfortable and long-term applications of breast hyperthermia therapy.

Keywords

• Smart textiles
• e-textiles
• Wearable medical thermotherapy
• Breast hyperthermia
• Woven fabric antenna
• Electromagnetic