Temperature calculations inside body during treatment by capacitive heating device

Abstract

Hyperthermia is one of the modalities for cancer treatment, utilizing the difference of thermal sensitivity between tumor and normal tissue. In the treatment, tumor should be heated up to the therapeutic temperature between 42 and 45 • C. In Japan, large number of capacitive heating devices are employed for hyperthermic treatments. In addition, some effects, which do not need the heating more than 42 • C, such as mild hyperthermia have also been studied by use of the same heating device. Therefore, many papers, which describe effectiveness of these treatments, have been published. However, temperature distributions inside the patient body during the treatment have not been cleared. So, in this paper, numerical calculations of temperature distributions inside patient body during the capacitive heating have been described. As a result, surface of the patient body was easy to heat compared with deep region of the body. In addition, blood flow rate of a target had a large influence to its temperature.