Dipole array applicator for hyperthermia

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Abstract
Hyperthermia (heating therapy) has attracted attention as a possible cancer therapy. Hyperthermia treats an affected area with heat. It is effective alone and its effect is multiplied when combined with other treatments. Many heating devices already proposed limit their heating to the surface; therefore, proposals for devices which can perform deep heating are strongly demanded. This paper proposes an applicator for hyperthermia which provides deep heating by exciting in‐phase dipole elements arranged on a circumference. Theoretical study is conducted to determine numerically various parameters of the proposed applicator and its temperature rise during heating. It is shown that deep heating with less overheating on the surface is possible with this proposed applicator. Furthermore, temperature rise at the tumor area can be expected with heating using a relatively low frequency but overheating and multiple hot‐spots (heating point) as in the case of conventional high‐frequency heating are not produced.