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In the clinical cancer therapy of regional hyperthermia nonlinear perfusion effects inside and outside the tumor seem to play a not negligible role. A stationary model of such effects leads to a nonlinear Helmholtz term within an elliptic boundary value problem. The present paper reports about the application of a recently designed adaptive multilevel FEM to this problem. For several 3D virtual patients, nonlinear versus linear model is studied. Moreover, the numerical efficiency of the new algorithm is compared with a former application of an adaptive FEM to the corresponding instationary model PDE.
Regional hyperthermia, a clinical cancer therapy, is the main topic of the Sonderforschungsbereich Hyperthermia: Scientific Methods and Clinical Applications'' at Berlin. In recent years, technological improvements towards a better concentration of heat to the desired target region have been achieved. These include a rather sophisticated integrated software environment for therapy planning and a new hyperthermia applicator. In a next step, a detailed closed loop monitoring of the actual treatment is to be developed. For this purpose the hyperthermia applicator is combined with an MRI system, which will allow to check the positioning of the patients and to measure individual blood perfusion as well as the 3D temperature distribution. The measurements will then be employed for an on-line control of the whole treatment. In this intended setting, new fast feedback control algorithms will come into play.
Electromagnetic phased arrays for regional hyperthermia -- optimal frequency and antenna arrangement
(2000)
In this paper we investigate the effects of the three-dimensional arrangement of antennas and frequency on temperature distributions that can be achieved in regional hyperthermia using an electromagnetic phased array. We compare the results of power-based and temperature-based optimization. Thus we are able to explain the discrepancies between previous studies favouring more antenna rings on the one hand and more antennas per ring on the other hand. We analyze the sensitivity of the results with respect to changes in amplitudes and phases as well as patient position. This analysis can be used for different purposes. First, it provides additional criteria for selecting the optimal frequency. Second, it can be used for specifying the required phase and amplitude accuracy for a real phased array system. Furthermore, it may serve as a basis for technological developments in order to reduce both types of sensitivities described above.
Adaptive Solutions of Nonlinear Parabolic Equations with Application to Hyperthermia Treatments
(1997)
We present a self-adaptive finite element method to solve nonlinear evolution problems in 3D. An implicit time integrator of Rosenbrock type is coupled with a multilevel approach in space. The proposed method is applied to hyperthermia treatments to demonstrate its potential for the solving of complicated problems.
We present a new technique for generating surface meshes from a uniform set of discrete samples. Our method extends the well-known marching cubes algorithm used for computing polygonal isosurfaces. While in marching cubes each vertex of a cubic grid cell is binary classified as lying above or below an isosurface, in our approach an arbitrary number of vertex classes can be specified. Consequently the resulting surfaces consist of patches separating volumes of two different classes each. Similar to the marching cubes algorithm all grid cells are traversed and classified according to the number of different vertex classes involved and their arrangement. The solution for each configuration is computed based on a model that assigns probabilities to the vertices and interpolates them. We introduce an automatic method to find a triangulation which approximates the boundary surfaces - implicitly given by our model - in a topological correct way. Look-up tables guarantee a high performance of the algorithm. In medical applications our method can be used to extract surfaces from a 3D segmentation of tomographic images into multiple tissue types. The resulting surfaces are well suited for subsequent volumetric mesh generation, which is needed for simulation as well as visualization tasks. The proposed algorithm provides a robust and unique solution, avoiding ambiguities occuring in other methods. The method is of great significance in modeling and animation too, where it can be used for polygonalization of non-manifold implicit surfaces.
The paper surveys recent progress in a joint mathematical-medical project on cancer therapy planning. Within so-called regional hyperthermia the computational task is to tune a set of coupled radiofrequency antennas such that a carefully measured tumor is locally heated, but any outside hot spots are avoided. A mathematical model of the whole clinical system -- air, applicator with antennas, water bolus, individual patient body -- involves Maxwell's equations in inhomogeneous media and a parabolic bioheat transfer equation, which represents a simplified model of heat transfer in the human body (ignoring strong blood vessel heat transport). Both PDEs need to be computed fast and to medical reliability (!) on a workstation within a clinical environment. This requirement triggered a series of new algorithmic developments to be reported here, among which is an adaptive multilevel FEM for Maxwell's equations, which dominates the numerical simulation time. In total, however, the main bulk of computation time (see Table 3 in Section 4 below) still goes into segmentation -- a necessary preprocessing step in the construction a 3D virtual patient from the input of a stack of 2D computed tomograms (left out here).
In the field of deep regional hyperthermia, one of the most widely used devices is the BSD--2000 Hyperthermia System which employs the Sigma 60 applicator. The Sigma 60 consists of four independent sources, giving it the potential to control the energy pattern within the patient. The independent amplitudes and phases, as well as frequency selection and applicator position, present a large number of parameters for the operator to determine. Computer simulation has long been recognized as an attractive approach to optimizing these parameters. A treatment planning program was used in clinical practice at Stanford University Medical Center for two years. It demonstrated the feasibility of computer simulation for deep regional hyperthermia in a clinical situation. However, several parts of this system were written in a language specific to one workstation, which severely restricted the wider distribution of the program to other users of the Sigma 60. A new treatment planning system for the BSD 2000 has been developed and put into clinical practice at the Rudolf Virchow Clinic of the Free University of Berlin. The new method, which we will refer to as the Berlin system, has a simpler model construction program and a considerably better graphics capability. However, the most important feature is that all programs are written in FORTRAN, C, or the X Window graphics system. Therefore, the entire treatment planning system is completely portable to other workstations.