Closing Gaps in Quality Assurance Procedures for Deep Hyperthermia Applicators

Paper i proceeding, 2026

Quality assurance (QA) in hyperthermia (HT) is essential to ensure consistent and effective heating performance of clinical HT systems. To evaluate the heating capability of deep HT applicators, the new ESHO QA guidelines define quantitative metrics derived from temperature measurements in homogeneous phantoms. However, their implementation has revealed limitations related to thermal mapping accuracy and challenges in evaluating quality metrics from the available data. This work introduces an improved QA framework addressing these gaps. A dedicated thermometry protocol was developed, including systematic calibration of the thermal mapping (TM) system and validation through standardized heating experiments benchmarked against electromagnetic-thermal simulations. Calibration reduced the mean deviation between experiments and simulations from 0.5 °C to 0.2 °C. A revised Thermal Effective Field Volume (TEFV) definition based on temperature profiles inflection points enables reliable estimation of this parameter, demonstrating robustness and easy integration into QA workflows.