Quality assurance for radiofrequency regional hyperthermia

Today most treatments with regional hyperthermia are applied using radiofrequency systems with 'focus' steering by amplitude and phase control. This paper deals with quality assurance procedures developed to ensure controlled and safe treatments in such systems. Our results show how the deviations between requested and observed phase and amplitude vary with frequency, and how these deviations depend on both the geometry of the object (phantom) inside the system and the power level applied. The results also indicate that the investigated systems' internal quality assurance procedures were inadequate and that additional procedures should be applied. Since the system parameters depend on patient and treatment specific conditions it is concluded that there is a need for QA measurements before or during treatment. This paper deals specifically with the commercial BSD-2000 system from BSD Medical Corp. in Salt Lake City, Utah, as installed in Bergen, but the procedure outlined can be applied to other phase and amplitude-controlled RF-RHT systems with only minimal adjustments.