Research activities

Improve treatment efficiency by RF/microwave hyperthermia in oncology

Efficiency of hyperthermia treatment depends on the ability of the hyperthermia system to ensure desired temperature distribution in the treated tumor for a specific time period. Typically the desired temperature distribution within the tumor tissue ranges from 41 to 45 °C and the treatment time is one hour. Currently, temperature is monitored either invasively using relatively low number of temperature probes or non-invasively using MRI systems. The former additionally to low resolution, can cause number of unwanted side effects. The later, on the other hand, is expensive.

The ELEDIA@CTU together with ELEDIA@UniTN recently started collaboration on development of a prototype of a regional microwave hyperthermia system steered by a 3D microwave non-invasive temperature monitoring.

In area of local superficial microwave hyperthermia we proposed novel microwave applicators and applicators’ arrays based on Zeroth Order Resonator Metamaterial Structures. These applicators excels in homogeneity of irradiated field and thus allows homogeneous heating of treated tumorous tissue.

Improve comfort of people with diabetes

In 2015, 382 million people (8.3% of the world’s population) have diabetes. Knowing the blood glucose concentration (BGC) in patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 or 2 is crucial for maintaining it within physiological limits. BGC often needs to be measured several times a day. All of the presently used BGC monitoring systems are invasive, bearing a number of obvious inconveniences with them such as pain, the risk of infection, tissue damage where blood is taken, patients’ fear of blood taking, and the associated costs. Due to these inconveniences, patients generally do not perform as many measurements as needed, even though regular BGC monitoring would not only significantly improve their quality of life but also decrease the cost of treatment. Furthermore, the type of device most commonly used for measuring the BGC is a handheld glucometer, which cannot be used for continuous glucose monitoring. Thus, if hyper/hypoglycemia occurs, it is often not detected.

It is evident that there is a clear demand for an inexpensive, non-invasive BGC monitoring technique. We investigate a possibility to accurately and reliably monitor blood-glucose level non-invasively using microwave sensors inspired by metamaterial transmission lines.

Improve treatment efficiency in patients with orofacial pain treated by neurostimulations

One of common problems of orofacial pain treatment using transcranial stimulations so far is the application of stimulation based solely on experience of medical personnel. There is no exact protocol of induced current density, position of stimulation coils/electrodes, as well as stimulation duration. Therefore the improvement of current understanding of transcranial stimulation treatments as well as investigation of new possibilities to improve their efficacy are of crucial importance.

We compute position, extent and intensity of neurostimulations by means of numerical simlations using two well-proven commercial 3D numerical simulators Sim4Life and COMSOL Multiphysics. Patient specific numerical head models created from patients’ MRI scans are used in order to increase relevance of numerical results.