New electromagnetic tool targets cancer tumors while protecting healthy tissue
Researchers have developed a treatment-planning system that uses electromagnetic energy to destroy head-and-neck cancers more precisely than current methods. The advance could improve outcomes for thousands of patients annually while reducing damage to surrounding organs—a shift that hospitals and cancer centers may adopt within five years.
Originaltitel: Advanced EM Modeling and Its Applications – A Journey from BioEM to Surface Electromagnetics for Communication
Electromagnetics (EM) underpins a broad spectrum of scientific and engineering applications, ranging from life sciences to telecommunications. Centered on advanced EM modeling and its practical use cases, this thesis presents a chronological compilation of the author’s contributions across two major domains: Bio‑Electromagnetics (BioEM) and surface Electromagnetics (SEM).The BioEM part focuses on radiative hyperthermia (HT) for head‑and‑neck cancer treatment. It introduces a new antenna model tailored for hyperthermic applications, followed by the design of an annular phased‑array applicator. Building on this hardware foundation, a hybrid beamforming strategy is proposed to accelerate convergence and avoid local minima, together with a versatile thermal solver capable of handling complex anatomical scenarios. These components are integrated into a unified HT treatment‑planning workflow aimed at concentrating EM energy within the tumor while minimizing unintended heating of surrounding healthy tissue.The SEM part of the thesis shifts toward next‑generation wireless communications and the emerging role of engineered metasurfaces in shaping the propagation environment. With reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) gaining traction as a key enabler of 6G technology, there is a growing need for EM‑compliant modeling frameworks that remain accurate, efficient, and computationally tractable. To address this, the thesis proposes a hybrid domain decomposition method (H‑DDM) for the synthesis and analysis of open‑cavity‑based RIS beamforming panels. H‑DDM is employed to study over‑the‑air mutual coupling, compared against Macromodeling as a representative surrogate technique from the literature, and benchmarked against commercial full‑wave solvers. The promising results highlight H‑DDM’s potential as a foundation for systematic modeling of emerging holographic beamforming panels and motivate further development of the framework.