The cooling effect of blood flow during hyperthermia treatment

Abstract

The amount and duration of the applied heat in hyperthermia treatment are critical for cancer survivors. The challenge is to use a mechanism dealing with the tumor cells only while keeping healthy tissues unharmed. The aim of this paper is to predict the blood temperature distribution in main dimensions during hyperthermia process by deriving a new analytical solution of unsteady flow that adequately covers the cooling factor. We adopted a separation of variable method to solve the bio-heat transfer problem of unsteady blood flow. The solution is similar to Pennes’ equation, except that it is for blood rather than tissue. We also performed computational simulations with varied flow conditions and thermal energy transports. The blood cooling effects were calculated with vessel’s diameter, tumor’s zone length, pulsating period and flow velocity. The cooling rate rises by around 133% if the tumor zone’s length is extended four times the diameter of 0.5 (mm), but it is seemingly fixed with this distance if the diameter is equal or larger than 4 (mm). Likewise, the temporal variations of temperature disappear if the blood vessel has a diameter of 4 (mm) or more. Pre-heating or post-cooling techniques perform effectively given the theoretical solution; under particular conditions, the reduction percentages of the cooling effect are between 130% and 200%, respectively.