Influence of blood-related parameters for hyperthermia-based treatments for cancer

Abstract

Hyperthermia is a cancer treatment method that uses controlled heat to induce tumor necrosis while preserving healthy tissue. This study uses computational simulations to investigate the effects of capillary network variability and blood flow dynamics on the thermal response during hyperthermia. A porous media bioheat model, coupled with uncertainty quantification (UQ) techniques using Monte Carlo simulations, was developed to analyze the influence of capillary angles, blood velocity, and capillary density on temperature distribution in biological tissues. The model demonstrates that under a range of physiological uncertainties, tumor tissues consistently reach the critical damage threshold temperature of $43^{\circ }C$, while healthy tissues remain below $38^{\circ }C$, minimizing collateral damage. To address the computational intensity of solving three-dimensional heat transfer equations with UQ analysis, high-performance computing methods were employed. A parallel implementation using CUDA achieved a speedup exceeding $114\times$ compared to serial processing, while OpenMP achieved a $16\times$ speedup.