Blind focusing of the electric field in microwave hyperthermia exploiting magnetic nanoparticles

This paper presents a novel approach to microwave hyperthermia exploiting magnetic nanoparticles as focusing agents, and reports the results of a 2D numerical study aimed at preliminarily assessing its effectiveness. The approach exploits magnetic nanoparticles, locally supplied to the tumor, to induce, through an external polarizing magnetic field, a detectable variation of its magnetic contrast. This variation is exploited to determine the excitations of the antenna array focusing the electromagnetic energy on the tumor. The advantage is that the synthesis of the excitations does not require any information neither on the geometry nor on the electromagnetic properties of the treated region, thus achieving totally blind field focusing. The magnetic nature of the magnetic nanoparticles contrast has required the development of an ad-hoc synthesis strategy, which, together with the use of magnetic nanoparticles, represents the novelty of the approach.