Microwave Breast Cancer Hyperthermia using Deformable Mirror

In recent years, hyperthermia has been suggested as an alternate adjuvant therapy to radiation and chemotherapy treatment of breast cancer. Clinical prototypes developed for RF hyperthermia often employ a phased array or multiple antenna arrangement to elevate the temperature at the tumor site for selective tissue heating. We propose in this paper, an alternative mode of hyperthermia treatment using a deformable membrane mirror. The deformable mirror with reflective coating functions as an adaptive focusing mirror and delivers preferential energy deposition at the tumor site in the breast. The proposed hyperthermia technique is devoid of the complexities associated with other RF approaches such as the need for the control of amplitude and phase of the antenna array elements for regional focusing