Estudo matemático e computacional da hipertermia oncológica

Abstract

The Oncology hyperthermia has been detached between cancer-fighting methods. This therapy consists in artificially heating the tissue of the body through electromagnetic waves, concentrating the heat into cancerous cells. The obtained increase of temperature in the affected organs promotes a greater sensitivity in the respective tumor cells, thus optimizing the expected benefits of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. In addition to being a painless, non-invasive procedure and without the need for hospital admission, hyperthermia does not exceed the body's thermal tolerance, thus preserving healthy tissues adjacent to tumor cells. In the problem of hyperthermia, electromagnetic waves are generated by electrodes (antennas) that are adjustable and spatially distributed. These antennas produce a source in the Helmholtz equation, whose solution appears as a heat source in the Bioheat equation. The objective is to find the best position and intensity of the antenna, so that only cancer cells are affected by the temperature increase. For this, an algorithm for hyperthermia with two stages is developed. In the first step find the location and the optimal number of antennas keeping at constant intensity. In the second stage the intensity of each antenna is found, maintaining the number and location obtained in the first stage. Based on this algorithm, numerical experiments are performed that show the effectiveness of the developed algorithm.