Thermal Property Estimation of Oil-in-Gelatin Tumor Phantom from Microwave Hyperthermia Experiment

Microwave hyperthermia utilizes electromagnetic energy to increase the temperature of the tumor while keeping the healthy tissues at their normal temperature values. Treatment planning before the application is required so that the antenna parameters are optimized to meet the patient's needs. Dielectric properties of the tissues as well as the thermal properties are required for precise planning. Chemical phantoms are utilized, in general, for pre-clinic hyperthermia studies, however, the thermal properties of each mixture are not available in the literature. This paper presents a method to estimate the thermal properties of the solid phantoms. Particle swarm optimization was utilized to fit the measured temperature data to the calculated one on a finite difference time domain model. The result showed a close similarity with the literature.