Theory of superlocalized magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia: Rotating versus oscillating fields

Abstract

The main idea of magnetic hyperthermia is to increase locally the temperature of the human body by means of injected superparamagnetic nanoparticles. They absorb energy from a time-dependent external magnetic field and transfer it into their environment. In the so-called superlocalization, the combination of an applied oscillating and a static magnetic field gradient provides even more focused heating since for large enough static field the dissipation is considerably reduced. Similar effect was found in the deterministic study of the rotating field combined with a static field gradient. Here we study theoretically the influence of thermal effects on superlocalization and on heating efficiency. We demonstrate that when time-dependent steady state motions of the magnetization vector are present in the zero temperature limit, then deterministic and stochastic results are very similar to each other. We also show that when steady state motions are absent, the superlocalization is severely reduced by thermal effects. Our most important finding is that in the low frequency range (ω→0) suitable for hyperthermia, the oscillating applied field is shown to result in two times larger intrinsic loss power and specific absorption rate then the rotating one with identical superlocalization ability which has importance in technical realization.