Research Projects

The laser-induced photothermal therapy (PTT) has gained considerable recognition being a minimally invasive treatment method for therapeutic applications. It employs a laser source to induce local hyperthermia in the cancerous cells embedded into biological tissues. The energy of the incident photons is converted into heat energy. As a result, the temperature of the biological tissue rises up to the predefined threshold value that causes cellular damage. Photothermal therapy should maximize the damage to the tumoral cells, with minimum thermal damage to the surrounding normal tissues. The lack of experimentation in this field, due to ethical reasons, motivates researchers to develop more sophisticated bioheat models. In radiation therapy, it is essential to stabilize the temperature of the tumour/cancerous cells below 45⁰C. However, the tumour is of complicated shape and size and hence the photothermal therapy results in non-uniform heating that can result in overheating/underheating of the tumour parts. Since generated heat is likely to diffuse to the surrounding medium, the overheating may damage the surrounding healthy tissue. Hence, for the successful accomplishment of photothermal therapy, it is important to achieve uniform heating throughout the tumour and maintain the desired temperature for a sufficient time with minimal thermal damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. The present research proposal aims to develop a novel thermal gradient-assisted self-positioning of laser head for photothermal therapy. This proposal is expected to achieve (i) uniform heating of irregularly shaped tumour/cancerous cells and (ii) to stabilize the temperature of the targeted tumour near the desired temperature (45-50ºC) with minimal thermal damage of the adjacent healthy tissues. The proposal involves numerical works primarily on 2D/3D regular/irregular shaped tumour/cancerous cells. This will be followed by the predefined positional experiments of the laser head to develop a thermal gradient-based laser positioning algorithm. This algorithm will be implemented in the last phase of experiments to optimize the laser head positioning during photothermal therapy. The objectives formulated for the present proposal are as follows: (i) Development of a 2-D Numerical Model that facilitates Self-positioning of Laser Head to achieve uniform heating in tumour/cancerous cells of regular/irregular shape and size. (ii) Development of a 3-D Numerical Model that facilitates Self-positioning of Laser Head to achieve uniform heating in tumour/cancerous cells of regular/irregular shape and size. (iii) Development of a predefined path-based laser head setup to validate the numerical model and perform parametric studies. (iv) Incorporation of a thermal gradient-assisted self-positioning of laser head mechanism to optimize laser position to achieve uniform heating in tumour/cancerous cells of regular/irregular shape and size.