Electric Field Measurement in Radiative Hyperthermia Applications

Oncological hyperthermia (HT) is a medical technique aimed at heating a specific region of the human body containing a tumour. The heat makes the tumour cells more sensitive to the cytotoxic effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Electromagnetic (EM) HT devices radiate a single-frequency EM field that induces a temperature increase in the treated region of the body. The typical radiative HT frequencies are between 60 and 150 MHz for deep HT applications, while 434 MHz and 915 MHz are used for superficial HT. The input EM power can reach up to 2000 W in deep HT and 250 W in superficial applications, and the E-field should be linearly polarized. This study proposes the development and use of E-field sensors to measure the distribution and evaluate the polarization of the E-field radiated by HT devices inside equivalent phantoms. This information is fundamental for the validation and assessment of HT systems. The sensor is constituted by three mutually orthogonal probes. Each probe is composed of a dipole, a diode, and a high-impedance transmission line. The fundamental difference in the operability of this sensor with respect to the standard E-field square-law detectors lies in the high-power values of the considered EM sources. Numerical analyses were performed to optimize the design of the E-field sensor in the whole radiative HT frequency range and to characterize the sensor behaviour at the power levels of HT. Then the sensor was realized, and measurements were carried out to evaluate the E-field radiated by commercial HT systems. The results show the suitability of the developed sensor to measure the E-field radiated by HT applicators. Additionally, in the measured devices, the linear polarization is evidenced. Accordingly, the work shows that in these devices, a single probe can be used to completely characterize the field distribution.