Magnetic hyperthermia is a promising cancer treatment method that involves complex multiphysics phenomena, including interstitial tissue fluid flow, magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) transport, and temperature evolution. However, these intricate processes have rarely been studied simultaneously, primarily due to the lack of a comprehensive simulation tool. To address this issue, we develop a comprehensive numerical framework in this study. Using this framework, we simulate a circular-shaped tumor embedded in healthy tissue. The treatment process is examined under two scenarios: one considering gravity and the other neglecting it. Without gravity, the interstitial tissue flow remains stationary, and hence MNP transport and temperature evolution are determined solely by diffusion. The optimal treatment time, when the tumor cells are completely ablated, decreases with both the Lewis number and the heat source number, following a power law. When gravity is considered, treatment efficacy deteriorates due to buoyancy-induced MNP movement, significantly extending the time required to completely ablate the tumor cells. This required time increases with both the buoyancy ratio and the Darcy ratio, also following a power law. The results from this study could provide valuable guidelines for practical magnetic hyperthermia treatment.

We developed a dedicated computational framework by coupling the lattice-Boltzmann-method (LBM) modeling and the particle-swarm-optimization (PSO) algorithm to search optimal strategies of magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) injection for hyperthermia-based cancer treatment. Two simplified tumor models were considered: a circular model representing geometrically regular tumors and an elliptic model representing geometrically irregular tumors, both sharing the same area. The temperature distribution in the tumor and its surrounding healthy tissue was predicted by solving the Pennes’ bio-heat transfer equation (PBHTE). Both single- and multi-site injection strategies were explored. The results suggest that the multi-site injection strategies generally work well, while the single-site injection strategy fails even on the simplest circular tumor model. The more the injection sites, the better the performance. In particular, when the number of injection sites reaches eight, all temperature requirements can be nearly 100% satisfied in both tumor models. Whether or not including the minimum dose requirement in the objective function only affects the optimization results by less than 2%. The thermal dose was also assessed by considering both temperature and heat exposure time. It was found that the optimal multi-site injection strategies perform reasonably well for both tumor models. Although the setting is only two dimensional and the optimization is on very simplified tumor models, the framework adopted in this present study works well and can provide useful insights into magnetic hyperthermia treatment.