Infrared thermography based magnetic hyperthermia study in Fe3O4 based magnetic fluids

• Magnetic hyperthermia is likely to emerge as an alternate cancer therapeutic procedure.
• Infrared thermal imaging is successfully used for quantifying specific absorption rate (SAR) in magnetic fluids.
• SAR determined from IRT and fiber optic sensor was in very good agreement with each other.
• Efficacy of IRT for field induced heating of magnetic nanofluid is demonstrated.
• IRT offers real-time, non-contact and wide area temperature mapping without sample contamination.

Owing to the immense clinical benefits, magnetic hyperthermia is likely to emerge as an alternate cancer therapeutic procedure in the near future. Presently, radio frequency immune fiber optic based sensors are being used to monitor temperature changes during magnetic hyperthermia measurements, which have inherent limitations due to the requirement of physical contact of the sensor with the sample, contamination and temperature monitoring at a single point. Here, we investigate the field induced heating of oil based oleic acid coated Fe3O4 nanofluid, synthesized using co-precipitation method, using infrared thermal imaging (IRT) camera and compare the results with those of fiber optic temperature sensor. Experiments were performed on nanofluid samples of four different concentrations and under five different external field amplitudes. The specific absorption rate (SAR) of the samples were determined from the initial rate of temperature rise measured using both the techniques. The SAR values determined from both the techniques were in very good agreement with each other, with in an accuracy of 5%, after incorporating convection loss correction on the infrared thermal imaging data. The consecutive thermal cycling on the samples showed good thermal stability and thermal recovery. The maximum SAR obtained was 95.9 W/gFe for a sample concentration and field amplitude of 23 wt.% and 57.3 kA m−1, respectively. This study showed the efficacy and accuracy of temperature measurement using IRT during field induced heating of magnetic nanofluid and its advantages over conventional point measurements techniques for real-time, non-contact and wide area temperature mapping without sample contamination.