High frequency and power density gallium nitride based inverter for magneto fluid hyperthermia

Magnetic hyperthermia is a promising cancer treatment technique based on selectively heating cancer cells to cause their death using the induction heating principles. In order to optimize the magnetic field generator, this paper proposes the design of a high-frequency high-power density inverter taking advantage of the recently developed high-voltage GaN devices and using an insulated metal substrate PCB for proper thermal management. The proposed converter is designed and implemented, showing its feasibility for the proposed application and enabling advanced treatments and an increased equipment portability.

I. Introduction

Power electronics plays a key role in biomedical systems including treatment tools such as electrosurgical units [1], [2], electroporation units [3], among others, or modern diagnosis and automatized systems. In the last years, magnetic hyperthermia has arisen as an alternative method for cancer treatment. Magnetic hyperthermia was described in the early 80s as a promising technique to help in the fight against cancer [4]–[6]. It consists on heating, using the principles of induction heating [7], certain magnetic materials disposed close to tumour cells in order to kill them (Fig. 1). This technique allows a certain degree of selective elimination due to the fact that cancer cells die at a slightly lower temperature than healthy cells.