Microwaves for breast cancer treatments

Abstract Hyperthermia is potentially an effective method for the treatment of cancer, especially breast cancer tumors. One of the most attractive attributes of hyperthermia is the possibility of providing therapeutic benefit noninvasively, minimizing side effects. To be effective, a hyperthermia treatment must selectively heat the cancerous tissue, elevating the temperature in the tumor without exposing healthy tissue to excessive temperature elevations. In this paper, a suggested simple model of Annular Phased Array (APA) using eight half wavelength linear dipoles is presented. New software (COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS) is used to calculate the temperature distribution inside a model of a three layered breast (skin, breast tissue, and tumor). In addition, the effect of changing the amplitude and phases of the array elements on the temperature distributions and the conditions on the values of the phases are demonstrated in order to achieve the objective of hyperthermia for breast tumor treatment.