Gold Nanoparticles for Microwave Hyperthermia: State of the Art and Preliminary Numerical Analysis

Microwave hyperthermia is an adjuvant oncologic thermal therapy that increases the effectiveness of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Even though it is applied successfully to several tumors, the limited penetration depth for some neoplasms, such as liver cancers hamper its clinical use. Gold nanoparticles are useful and powerful tools in biomedical applications. So far, few studies dealt with a comprehensive and thorough study of using gold nanoparticles as hyperthermia agents for liver cancers. In this study, a critical analysis of the state of the art is performed to identify knowledge gaps and then a numerical framework for investigating the microwave propagation and the treatment planning is proposed. The findings suggest the possibility of transmitting significant levels of microwave power at 434 MHz and show that the fraction of gold nanoparticles in the tumor volume strongly affects the dielectric response and power deposition. From the numerical multiphysics simulations, assuming plane wave exposure, heating in the tumor can be increased due to the increased electrical conductivity of the gold nanoparticles, reaching an average value of 40. 5° C after 60 min of treatment.