Preliminary Study of the Mechanical Properties of Biological Tissue During Microwave Hyperthermia

Hyperthermia refers to heating tissue between 40 °C and 45 °C. In oncology, it is used as an adjuvant therapy to enhance the effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Heat also induces conformational changes in proteins, which alter the tissue's stiffness. In this work, we measure the mechanical properties of ex vivo chicken breast samples during heating and simulate the effect of gravity and thermal deformation on tissue heated for 60 min. We compare these effects - in a smaller and larger region - to the reference state (the mechanical properties are constant, and there is no thermal deformation). We conclude that the displacement of the heated areas between the two states (reference and after 60 min of hyperthermia) is 0.70 mm and 6.45 mm for the geometry with smaller and larger heated regions, respectively. Future work should address the impact of blood flow on the temperature distribution of tissues treated with hyperthermia.