Test of the MECS IHT system with bovine tongues

Hyperthermia, the elevation of tumour temperature, is a cancer treatment. The Multi Electrode Current Source Interstitial Hyperthermia Treatment system (MECS IHT), was deviced to obtain the necessary uniform temperature distribution. For testing this system, isolated bovine tongues were used, The target volume was heated by 7 mono, dual or quadruple electrodes in a hexagonal implant to a temperature rise of 8 K. The temperature distributions at various perfusion rates were measured by scanning 10 thin thermocouples in planes perpendicular to the electrodes (steps: 1 mm). The treatment planning system was tested by simulating the experimental setup and comparing the generated temperature distribution to the experimental results. The vasculature used in the simulations was obtained from MRA images combined with a network constructing program for the smallest vessels. The resulting temperature distributions suggest the MECS IHT is capable of steering on centimetre scale. The simulated distributions agreed with the experiments from that scale up