Effects of pulsating heat source on interstitial fluid transport in tumor tissues

Macromolecules and drug delivery to solid tumors is strongly influenced by fluid flow through interstitium, and pressure-induced tissue deformations can have a role in this. Recently, it has been shown that temperature-induced tissue deformation can influence interstitial fluid velocity and pressure fields, too. In this paper, the effect of modulating-heat strategies to influence interstitial fluid transport in tissues is analyzed. The whole tumor tissue is modeled as a deformable porous material, where the solid phase is made up by extracellular matrix and cells, while the fluid phase is the interstitial fluid that moves through the solid matrix driven by fluid pressure gradient and vascular capillaries that are modelled as uniformly interspersed fluid point-source. Pulsating-heat generation is modeled with a time-variable cosine function starting from a direct current approach to solve voltage equation, for different pulsations. From the steady-state solution, a step-variation of vas...