Lund Reports on Atomic Physics, LRAP-159

Hyperthermia can be used for tumour treatments. It implies the heating of cells with a following cell death. Classically, the temperature used in hyperthermia treatment ranges between 41-46 oc. This is due to an observed greater heat sensibility of tumour tissue compared to healthy tissue at these temperatures. In all hyperthermia treatments it is of vital importance to know the tissue temperature. This is usually accomplished by inserting temperature probes into the tissue, but can also be calculated by a model for the heating and the heat transport in tissue. This work discusses laser-induced hyperthermia. A computer model for calculating the temperature distribution in a laser irradiated tissue was constructed. The validity of the model was examined by comparing its predictions with experimental data obtained for a beef liver. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Stefan Andersson-Engels who outlined this project and helped me throughout my work. I would also like to thank Dr. Goran Hellstrom at the Department of Mathematical Physics, Lund Institute of Technology, for kindly providing me with the basic numerical algorithms for the numerical heat transfer model. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Sune Svanberg and the numerous people at the Division of Atomic Physics not mentioned by name who made this work possible. i