Considerations on Soft Heating Elements Utilizing Temperature Sensitive Amorphous Metal Flakes and Their Application to Local Hyperthermia

Basic studies of a "Soft Heating" method for hyperthermia treatment were performed. The Soft Heating method is a kind of induction heating utilizing temperature-sensitive magnetic material implanted inside the body or tissue. It has the advantage of enabling temperature control, since the temperature attained depends on the Curie temperature of the material. In this work, temperature-sensitive amorphous metal flakes in the Fe-P-C-Cr system with various mean lengths were employed as soft heating elements. The results of this study indicated the following: (1) reduction of the demagnetizing factor of the heating element is effective for improving heat generation; (2) possible regions of application were identified through phantom tests.