Analytical characterization of heat transport through biological media incorporating hyperthermia treatment

Modeling and understanding heat transport and temperature variations within biological tissues and body organs are key issues in medical thermal therapeutic applications, such as hyperthermia cancer treatment. The biological media can be treated as a blood saturated tissue represented by a porous matrix. A comprehensive analytical investigation of bioheat transport through the tissue/organ is carried out including thermal conduction in tissue and vascular system, blood–tissue convective heat exchange, metabolic heat generation and imposed heat flux. Utilizing local thermal non-equilibrium model in porous media theory, exact solutions for blood and tissue phase temperature profiles as well as overall heat exchange correlations are established for the first time, for two primary tissue/organ models representing isolated and uniform temperature conditions, while incorporating the pertinent effective parameters, such as volume fraction of the vascular space, ratio of the blood and the tissue matrix thermal conductivities, interfacial blood–tissue heat exchange, tissue/organ depth, arterial flow rate and temperature, body core temperature, imposed hyperthermia heat flux, metabolic heat generation, and blood physical properties. A simplified solution based on the local thermal equilibrium between the tissue and the blood is also presented.