Performance Evaluation of Hyperthermia Applicators to Heat Deep-Seated Brain Tumors

Abstract

Addition of hyperthermia to modern cancer therapies is highly effective in improving the treatment outcome of deep-seated head and neck tumors. Brain tumors, on the other hand, are more difficult for heating due to high perfusion and thermal conduction. However, late side effects of conventional therapies in children with brain cancer make it important to combine hyperthermia with these therapies. For this purpose, a hyperthermia applicator capable of efficient heat delivery to large and deep-seated brain tumors is required. In this paper, we evaluate preliminary design of hyperthermia applicators for treatment of deep-seated brain tumors in children. We present three applicators with a different numbers of antennas. The performance of the applicators is compared and evaluated in terms of hyperthermia quality indicators. Although the analysis results in terms of power loss density show that all the applicators are capable of heating sufficiently large deep-seated spherical tumors in our simple head model, more antennas resulted in higher power absorption in the tumors and higher values of tumor coverage.