Patent ID: 8728067

Claim:
A surgical ablation system, comprising: a source of ablation energy; a source of electrosurgical energy; a switching assembly configured to selectively and operably couple at least one of the source of ablation energy or the source of electrosurgical energy to an inner conductor of an ablation probe, the ablation probe including: a cannula having a proximal end and a distal end; a shaft slidably disposed within the cannula and having at least a stowed position and a deployed position; the inner conductor adapted to operably couple to the switching assembly, the inner conductor coaxially disposed within the shaft and extending from a distal end thereof to form a needle electrode; and a deployable ground plane electrode assembly coupled to the distal end of shaft, the deployable ground plane comprises a plurality of resilient wire elements circumferentially disposed about the distal end of the shaft and within the cannula when the shaft is in the stowed position, wherein the shaft is movable from the stowed position to the deployed position to extend the needle electrode and the deployable ground plane assembly past the distal end of the cannula thereby expanding the plurality of resilient wires radially from the distal end of the shaft.