Monte carlo simulation of the effects of large blood vessels during hyperthermia

Abstract

Large blood vessels can produce localized cooling in heated tissues during tumor hyperthermia. This study has developed a Monte Carlo algorithm to simulate the cooling effect of large blood vessels during hyperthermia. Similar to previous formulations, heat transfer coefficients are used to calculate heat transfer of large blood vessels, and several typical vascular geometries are applied. The corresponding thermal model combines the Pennes bioheat transfer equation for perfused tissues and the energy equation for blood vessels with a constant Nusselt number. Using the Monte Carlo algorithm, numerical analyses are performed to test the influences of large blood vessels to the temperature distributions of tissues. The results indicate that during hyperthermia the presence of large vessels can be an important source of temperature non-uniformity and possible under-dosage. Reduction of blood flow through the large vessels is found to be an effective approach of reducing the localized cooling. © Springer-Verlag 2004.