Physical parameters in thermal imaging of basal cell cancer patients treated with high-dose-rate brachytherapy — first study

BACKGROUND: The basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is often treated by surgery or radiotherapy using ionizing radiation. While there is an established diagnostic path before treatment and also for the follow-up there are no good noninvasive methods objectifying irradiated area evolution during treatment. The main goal of preliminary studies was to try to answer if there are any useful information that can be derived from temperature effects of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy in treatment of BCC. Moreover, the temperature gradient was introduced as a physical parameter characterizing the thermal map of the lesion, its surroundings and reference area, which provided information about cancer tissue thermal reaction to brachytherapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-three patients suffering from BCC were monitored with thermovision during the brachytherapy treatment. All lesions were diagnosed as superficial and were confirmed with histopathology examination. RESULTS: Results of the study showed two groups of patients characterized with two thermal maps and temperature gradient describing the lesion and surrounding area of BCC. The first group was characterized by higher temperature of the lesion than the surrounding tissue temperature (mean dT = 0,41°) whereas the other one, with lower lesion temperature (mean dT = −0.42°). It seems that the temperature changes observed in designated areas before and after therapy may provide physicians with additional information which could be useful in planning the treatment process, especially when considering temperature gradient changes during therapy. CONCLUSIONS: Although the data obtained indicate the possibilities of temperature distribution in pre-irradiation cases, further research is required for estimation of clinical effects of treatment.