Reduced Collateral Tissue Damage Using Thermal-Feedback-Based Power Adaptation of an Electrosurgery Inverter

Abstract

Well-selected power with accurate delivery is of importance in electrosurgery to generate proper temperature at the cutting site, and thus, reduce undesired collateral tissue damages. Conventional electrosurgery generator (ESG) targets tracking a preset power, manually set by surgeons per their experience before the surgery, with high accurate delivery. It is possible that this fixed power setting is not at the optimal point and, thus, increases the possibility of added-collateral biomedical tissue damage. To eliminate the potential negative impact of the fixed and ill-suited power setting, a real-time feedback control scheme is outlined in this article to adjust the preset power of the ESG to create an adaptive power reference, which is then tracked using an experimental high-frequency inverter (HFI) that enables electrosurgery with a fundamental (sinusoidal) output frequency of 390 kHz. Subsequently, experiments using the gallium nitride (GaN)-based HFI are carried out to demonstrate the efficacy of the new variable-power approach over the conventional fixed power approach in terms of collateral tissue damage reduction.