Heat Focusing in Head and Neck Hyperthermia Considering Vessels Blood Flow

This paper investigates how blood flow in major vessels affects temperature distribution during hyperthermia treatments in the head and neck (H&N) region. To do this, we used an in-silico model and a physical phantom of the neck region where a silicon tube with flowing water was introduced to simulate the presence of the two jugular veins and two carotid arteries. The results show that temperature variations of more than 5°C can affect temperature simulations when the effect of blood flow is not considered. The achieved results were confirmed by temperature measurements performed using the physical phantom and a full-operating mock-up reproducing an hyperthermia treatment in the neck region.