Output Power Computation and Adaptation Strategy of an Electrosurgery Inverter for Reduced Collateral Tissue Damage

This paper investigates two ways of output-power computation, namely, sparse- and multi-sampling-based methods, to overcome sampling speed limitation and arcing nonlinearity for electrosurgery. Moreover, an impedance-based power adaptation strategy is explored for reduced collateral tissue damage.

The efficacy of the proposed power computation and adaptation strategy are experimentally investigated on a gallium-nitride (GaN)-based high-frequency inverter prototype that allows electrosurgery with a 390 kHz output frequency.

The sparse-sampling-based method samples output voltage once and current twice per cycle. The achieved power computing errors over 1000 cycles are 1.43 W, 2.54 W, 4.53 W, and 4.89 W when output power varies between 15 W and 45 W. The multi-sampling-based method requires 28 samples of both outputs, and the corresponding errors are 0.02 W, 0.86 W, 1.86 W, and 3.09 W. The collateral tissue damage gauged by average thermal spread is 0.86 mm, 0.43 mm, 1.11 mm, and 0.36 mm for the impedance-based power adaptation against 1.49 mm for conventional electrosurgery.

Both power-computation approaches break sampling speed limitations and calculate output power with small errors. However, with arcing nonlinearity presence, the multi-sampling-based method yields better accuracy. The impedance-based power adaptation reduces thermal spreads and diminishes sensor count and cost.

This paper exemplifies two novel power-computation ways using low-end industrial-scale processors for biomedical research involving high-frequency and nonlinearly distorted outputs. Additionally, this work is the first to present the original impedance-based power adaptation strategy for reduced collateral damage and it may motivate further interdisciplinary research towards collateral-damage-less electrosurgery.