Dr. Punit Prakash
K-State Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Technologies for conformal image-guided thermal therapy of cancer: challenges and opportunities
102 Cardwell Hall
February 16, 2015
4:30 p.m.
Image-guided thermal therapy offers a minimally invasive approach for treatment of cancer and benign disease. Clinical trials have demonstrated the benefit of local hyperthermia, moderate heating in the range of 40 < T < 45 °C, to increase the efficacy of radiation and/or chemotherapy. Heating to higher temperatures in excess of 50 °C leads to rapid tissue destruction (thermal ablation), and is increasingly being used for treatment of localized tumors in the liver, kidney, bone, lung, and other organs. For both applications, successful treatments require localized energy deposition for sufficient heating of the target tissue, while minimizing thermal damage to adjacent critical structures. This talk will briefly review interactions between electromagnetic and acoustic waves with biological tissue, and the use of mathematical models for predicting energy deposition, bioheat transfer, and tissue thermal damage. Application of biophysical models for informing device designs and tailoring treatment delivery strategies for individual patient anatomies will be presented. The talk will highlight image-guided thermal therapy research at KSU, including: (1) design of novel microwave antennas offering improved spatial control of energy deposition for delivering conformal thermal ablation and hyperthermia, (2) mathematical models of microwave ablation for predictive patient-specific treatment planning, and (3) strategies for enhancing electromagnetic thermal therapy with nanoparticle contrast agents.
