The Design of an Automatic Temperature Compensation System through Smart Heat Comparison/Judgment and Control for Stable Thermal Treatment in Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC) Surgery

Abstract

After surgery for ovarian cancer or colorectal cancer, residual tumors are left around. A practical way to treat residual tumors is to destroy them with heat by injecting high-temperature drugs into the abdominal cavity. The injected medicinal substances are induced to flow out of the abdominal cavity; then, the spilled drug flows back into the abdominal cavity through feedback. During this process, the heat starts to decrease; thus, the treatment performance reduces. To overcome this problem, this study compares and assesses the temperature needed to maintain the heat for treatment and transmits a command signal to the heat exchanger through a look-up table (LUT). When the temperature decreases during the circulation of medications leaking out of the abdominal cavity, the LUT transmits a control signal (T_p) to the heat exchanger, which increases or vice versa. However, if the temperature (T_o) is within the treatment range, the LUT sends a T_s signal to the heat exchanger. This principle generates a pulse signal for the temperature difference (T_dif) in TC by comparing and determining the temperature (T_o) of the substance flowing out of the abdominal cavity with the reference temperature (T_ref) through the temperature comparator (TC). At this time, if the signal is 41 °C or less, the LUT generates (heats) a T_p signal so that the temperature of the heat exchanger can be maintained in the range of 41 °C to 43 °C. If the T_dif is 44 °C or higher, the LUT generates (cools) the T_a signal and maintains the temperature of the heat exchanger at 41-43 °C. If the T_dif is maintained at 41-43 °C, the LUT generates a T_x signal to stop the system performance. At this time, the TC operation performance and T_dif generation process for comparing and determining the signal of T_o and T_ref for drugs leaking out of the abdominal cavity is very important. It was observed that the faster the response signal, the lower the comparison and judgment error was; therefore, the response signal was confirmed to be 0.209 μs. The proposed method can guarantee rapid/accurate/safe treatment and automatically induce temperature adjustment; thus, it could be applied to the field of surgery.

Keywords: HIPEC surgery; LUT; cancer; high-temperature drug; temperature adjustment.

Figure 1

Concept of HIPEC surgery [24].

Figure 2

Principle of drug delivery during HIPEC surgery.

Figure 3

HIPEC surgery (operating room) [21].

Figure 4

Block diagram of proposed system.

Figure 5

Logic signals for temperature comparison and decision by the proposed system.

Figure 6

Equivalent circuit of proposed system for temperature comparison, control and the implemented circuit.

Figure 7

Experimental environment and configuration system.

Figure 8

Output of pulse logic signal for the comparison and control of temperature based on TC.

Figure 9

Output temperature obtained from the comparison and control based on TC.

Figure 10

Measurement results for the pulse signal corresponding to temperature.

Figure 11

Measurement results of the pulse signal with response delay in parallel with the temperature comparison and decision (T_dif). (a) Response delay; (b) Sampling of response delay.

Figure 12

Comparison for measured output pulse signal, thermal condition graph, and thermal imaging camera. (a) Shooting of thermal imaging (high temperature of normal saline); (b) Pulse signal and thermal condition graph; (c) Pulse signal and thermal imaging camera.

Figure 13

Three-dimensional (3D) graph based on experimental results verifying that the temperature was maintained.

Figure 14

Proposed system fabrication and temperature test.