Abstract
The problem: Hyperthermia when used as an adjuvant to normal radiation therapy significantly increases treatment response rates in cancerous tumors. The goal of a hyperthermia treatment is to elevate the tumor tissue temperature to therapeutic levels, while maintaining the surrounding normal tissue at safe temperature levels.
To achieve these treatment goals, researchers have investigated the use of model based controllers for hyperthermia. These model based controllers perform well; however, the complex and inhomogeneous nature of the tumor and surrounding tissue leads to large finite element, bio heat transfer models which make real time control computationally intractable. Hence, techniques are needed to reduce the model size, while retaining an acceptable degree of accuracy in the input-output map (the map from the applied power to the measured temperatures).
