Study of a brain hyperthermia system providing also passive brain temperature monitoring

Abstract

A newly developed system for deep brain hyperthermia able to provide also passive measurements of temperature distributions inside the human body and especially the brain, is presented in this paper. The proposed system able to comprise both therapeutic and diagnostic modules operates in a totally non-invasive contactless way based on the use of an ellipsoidal conductive wall cavity to achieve beamforming and focusing on the areas under treatment and temperature monitoring. The performance of the system's diagnostic module designed and developed for brain imaging, has been previously studied in phantom, animal and human tests illustrating promising results. In the present paper theoretical analysis of the therapeutic module designed for hyperthermia treatment, elicited during simulation performance, exhibit the system's focusing attributes. Moreover, initial phantom experimental results verify the proof of concept. Taking into consideration the present initial theoretical and experimental study and the great advantage of the proposed brain hyperthermia system of being non invasive and with a very acceptable cost, it is concluded that further research is required in order to explore its potentials at becoming a part of the standard treatment protocol of brain malignancy in the future.