Numerical analysis of temperature and thermal dose response of biological tissues to thermal non-equilibrium during hyperthermia therapy

The temperature and thermal dose response of tumor tissue to hyperthermia therapy under conditions of thermal non-equilibrium have been investigated. The thermal model considers the tissue with its blood vessel distribution as a porous medium and employs the convection term instead of the perfusion term in the energy conservation equations for both tissue and blood. By using a numerical method, the temperatures and thermal dose responses of tissues with different vessel diameters, blood velocities, and porosities were calculated. Through an accuracy comparison, the numerical results were used to compare this model with the results for the one-equation porous model under thermal equilibrium. The primary results indicate that the one-equation porous model is suitable for a distribution of blood vessels when the diameters are less than 30 μm and the blood velocities are lower than 0.4 cm s−1.