THE EFFECTS OF PULSATING HEAT SOURCE ON HYPERTHERMIA IN A CANCEROUS TISSUE

One of the most used cancer treatments is the thermal ablation, in which necrosis in tumor tissues is induced by employing a certain thermal dose. Depending on the lesion and other medical aspects, a prefixed thermal dose is applied by varying thermal power and/or exposure time. Besides, it is important to apply the right thermal dose in order to not damage healthy tissues. In this paper, the effects of a pulsating heat source on a tumor cell are investigated in order to improve thermal ablation processes. The tumor cell is modelled as a porous sphere made up by a solid phase (tissue, interstitial space, etc.) and a fluid phase (blood). The pulsating heat source term is referred only to a part of this sphere. A Local Thermal Non-Equilibrium (LTNE) model is employed to take into account the local temperature difference between the two phases. Governing equations with the appropriate boundary conditions are solved with the finite-element code COMSOL Multiphysics®. Results are presented in terms of temperature fields and tissue damage for different pulsatile heating conditions, blood velocities and porous tissue geometrical properties, in order to show under which condition, at equal thermal dose, thermal ablation procedure is optimized.