Mathematical Modeling for Convection-Enhanced Drug Delivery

Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) techniques for cancer therapeutics have now been widely used. Consequentially, the measurement of efficiency of CED becomes more and more important. It is difficult to quantify CED efficiency and extent by using clinical and experimental methods alone. With the development of computer science, more and more researches introduce mathematical modeling method to assess CED efficiency and extent. Based on mass and momentum conservation and transport physical principles, this paper introduces a mathematical model for convection-enhanced intratumoral drug delivery in porous tumor tissue, and presents 2D numerical solution algorithm for this CED model, which is easy to be expanded to 3D cases. By showing results with different variables, this paper analyzes dominating factors’ impact on drug distribution and shows the rationality of our CED model. This work is helpful for predicting the drug distribution in tumor and opens up new opportunities for using computer science to help clinical tumor treatment plan.