Uncertainty Quantification of Tissue Damage Due to Blood Velocity in Hyperthermia Cancer Treatments.

In 2020, cancer was responsible for almost 10 million deaths around the world. There are many treatments to fight against it, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplant. Hyperthermia is a new treatment that is under study in clinical trials. The idea is to raise the tumour temperature to reach its necroses. Since this is a new treatment, some questions are open, which can be addressed via computational models. Bioheat porous media models have been used to simulate this treatment, but each work adopts distinct values for some parameters, such as the blood velocity, which may impact the results obtained. In this paper, we carefully perform an uncertainty quantification analysis due to the uncertainties associated with estimating blood velocity parameters. The results of the in silico experiments have shown that considering the uncertainties presented in blood velocity, it is possible to plan the hyperthermia treatment to ensure that the entire tumour site reaches the target temperature that kills it.