J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
DOI 10.1007/s40430-016-0553-3
TECHNICAL PAPER
Numerical simulation of nanoparticles assisted laser
photothermal therapy: a comparison of the P1‑approximation
and discrete ordinate methods
Alexandre B. Bruno1 · André Maurente1 · Bernard Lamien2 · Helcio R. B. Orlande2
Received: 29 January 2016 / Accepted: 26 April 2016
© The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering 2016
Abstract  Photothermal therapy (PTT) with combined use
of laser radiation and photon absorber nanoparticles is a
promising technique to treat cancer. Treatment planning
and devising appropriate protocols for cancer photo ther-
mal therapy require the computational simulation of cou-
pled physical phenomena, such as radiation, conduction,
and blood perfusion. The P1-approximation is a numeri-
cal method to solve radiation heat transfer which features
the advantage of being computationally fast and, therefore,
desirable for PTT simulations. However, the method is
known to become inaccurate under certain conditions. In
this study, the P1-approximation and the accurate discrete
ordinate method were applied to solve a set of test prob-
lems idealized to portray conditions encountered in PTT.
The test problems were one-dimensional, and the radiation
scattering was assumed as isotropic. Tissues composed by
layers with different properties were considered, includ-
ing cases in which gold nanoparticles were embedded in
the tissue to increase photon absorption. For the problems
considered here, the P1-approximation and discrete ordi-
nate method results presented quite good agreement for
the time-dependent temperature distribution, which is the
quantity of interest in PTT.
Technical Editor: Francis HR Franca.
* André Maurente
amaurente@gmail.com
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University
of Rio Grande do Norte-UFRN, Campus Universitário,
Lagoa Nova, Natal 59072‑970, RN, Brazil
2 increased, such as carbon nanotubes [15]. Differently of
Department Mechanical Engineering‑POLI/COPPE, Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro-UFRJ, Cx. Postal 68503, Cidade
Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 21945‑970, Brazil
 
Keywords  Photothermal therapy · Heat transfer
simulation · Coupled radiation-conduction-blood
perfusion · P1-approximation  · Discrete ordinate method
1 Introduction
Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a procedure in which ther-
mal radiation is used to treat diseases. It has become quite
promising for the treatment of various types of cancer with
the recent development of nanotechnology. The combined
use of nanoparticles and collimated laser light allows to
selectively heat and induce hyperthermia of cancerous
cells, while preserving the surrounding healthy tissues, thus
making the treatment minimally invasive. Due to this rea-
son, there is a growing interest on using PTT to treat can-
cer, as can be verified in the review by Bayazitoglu [1].
Near-infrared (NIR) lasers are of common use in medi-
cine, and research works involving their application for
photothermal cancer therapy can be found in the literature
[2–13]. In the range of the NIR spectrum encompassing
the wavelengths between 700 and 1100 nm, the extinction
coefficient of most biological tissues is low [1]. Therefore,
laser radiation within such a spectral range propagates into
the human body without significant attenuation. On the
other hand, there are nanoparticles that strongly absorb NIR
radiation, which can be embedded in tissues to increase
the absorption in specific regions. Most of these particles
are constituted of noble metals and can be designed for a
specific resonance frequency [14]. Also, noble metals pre-
sent low levels of toxicity [2]. More recently, interest in
the application of carbon-based nanoparticles to PTT has
the nanoparticles made of noble metals, the ones composed
of carbon-based nanomaterials are not tunable for being
13

highly absorbant in a specific wavelength; instead, they
have a high extinction coefficient along a large range of the
visible and NIR spectra.
The application of PTT for cancer therapy has attracted
the attention of researchers from different areas. In vivo
experiments are of primary importance, since they allow to
assay the feasibility of treating cancers with different PTT
strategies, which can vary mostly due to differences in the
laser configuration, type of nanoparticles, and methods to
deliver the particles, as can be verified from the reviews in
references [1, 16, 17].
Another field of interest concerns the nanoparticles
themselves, since the success of the therapy depends on
their optical properties. Examples of works in this area
include those by Tuersun and Han [14], An et al. [18], and
Lui et al. [19]. The first shows the relation of the backscat-
tering and absorption properties of nanoshells with the
dimensions of the silica core radii and gold shells, the sec-
ond presents a numerical investigation about the radiative
properties of silver nanorod dimers assemblies, while the
last one is concerned with a model to calculate resonance
properties of nanoshells with metal cores.
Although the photothermal therapy strategies must be
ultimately validated for medical applications by in vivo
experiments, numerical methods are a powerful tool, which
can be used to simulate the heat transfer processes occurring
during a PTT procedure. Numerical simulations can par-
tially replace experimental investigation, with the advantage
that some parameters can easily be modified in a computer
code, allowing simulating an enormous variety of nanopar-
ticles, tissues, and lasers with minor increase of costs, time,
and manual labor. Therefore, the development of reliable
numerical models for simulating PTT procedures can be
considerably useful, and some models were proposed. The
majority of the models solve the Pennes energy equation
[20] coupled to the radiative transfer equation [21, 22]. In
such models, the most complex task is the solution of the
radiative heat transfer problem. Tjahjono and Bayazitoglu
[7], and Vera and Bayazitoglu [8] considered an one-dimen-
sional problem with isotropic radiation scattering. For the
radiative transfer solution, they employed the spherical har-
monics with the first-order approximation (P1-approxima-
tion). This method is computationally fast, which is highly
desirable for applications to simulate the complex processes
of heat transfer in PTT, specially with irregular three-dimen-
sional geometries such as those which can occur in real
tumors. However, the method can be inaccurate in certain
cases. For example, the P1-approximation becomes less
accurate in multidimensional geometries with thin media
associated to strongly anisotropic radiation scattering [22].
In spite of the fast growing of computers’ processing
power, simulating coupled radiation, conduction, and blood
perfusion, which can occur in real three-dimensional PTT
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J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
treatments, is still considerably expensive in terms of com-
putational time, especially because of the radiation solu-
tion. Thus, using a computationally cheap method as the
P1-approximation is highly desirable, and because of that,
the method has been applied in researches aimed at gain-
ing knowledge about PTT simulations, including cases in
which simple one-dimensional problems are approached,
examples are [7, 8, 10, and 23]. Nonetheless, the P1-approx-
imation can be inaccurate in some cases. As demonstrated
by Mengüç and Viskanta [24], under conditions for which
the P1-approximation becomes inaccurate, the discrete ordi-
nates method can still provide accurate results. The present
study compares the P1-approximation with the more accu-
rate discrete ordinate method with eighth order of angular
discretization (S8). The approached problems simulate cases
of skin and breast cancer. In both cases, the geometry is
approximated as one-dimensional, and the medium scatters
radiation isotropically. Tissues with and without nanoparti-
cles embedded in are considered. Results are presented for
the temperature field obtained by solving the coupled radia-
tion, conduction, and blood perfusion, as well as for the
divergence of the radiative heat flux, to evaluate the meth-
ods for pure radiation solutions.
2 Fundamental equations and modeling
In the problems examined here, a tissue is irradiated by col-
limated laser light. While the temperature of the tissue rises
due to radiative energy absorption, heat is removed by con-
duction and blood perfusion. The quantity of major inter-
est for PTT is the time and spatially dependent tissue tem-
perature, T, since the success of the treatment depends on
the magnitudes of temperature in the tissues and the time
that they are subjected to high temperatures. To obtain the
temperature distribution, the following form of the energy
equation needs to be solved:
∂T
ρcp = ∇ · k∇T + ∇ · qr + ρb vb cb Tb − T (1)
∂t
where ρ and cp are, respectively, the tissue density and spe-
cific heat, t is time, k is the thermal conductivity of the tissue,
and the last term accounts for the removal of heat from the tis-
sue due to blood perfusion, as proposed by Pennes [20]. With
the exception of T, all quantities appearing in this last term are
relative to blood, as indicated by the subscript b, being ρb, cb,
Tb ,and vb ,respectively, the density, specific heat, blood tem-
perature, and blood perfusion rate. The laser radiation absorp-
tion is accounted for the divergence of the radiative heat flux,
in the second term of the right-hand side of Eq. (1).
The problems considered here are one-dimensional. In
this case, Eq. (1) can be reduced and written for the x direc-
tion as
J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.

In the above equation, s denotes the depth below the sur-

 
∂T d T dqr,x  
ρcp = k + + ρb vb cb Tb − T (2) face where the irradiation is imposed, qo is the laser power,
∂t dx dx dx
and Re is the reflectivity of the boundary surface irradiated
Obtaining qr,x requires the solution of the radiative transfer by the laser, which is external to the tissue slab, as indi-
equation (RTE), which gives the variation of the intensity, I, cated by the subscript e.
as a radiation ray propagates in a particular direction, s. For Considering the boundaries as diffuse and gray, and
quasi-steady conditions, the RTE takes the following form: neglecting surface emission, the boundary condition for Eq.
(5) is
dI σsc,
 4π 
= κ Ib, − β I + � (�, �i )I,i (�i )d�i (3) 1 R
ds 4π �i =0 Iw = qo (1 − Re ) + Ii (�i )|n̂ · ŝ|d�i (7)
4π π n̂·ŝ<0
where Ib, is the blackbody spectral intensity given by the where R is the reflectivity of the surface boundary, which is
Planck function, κ is the absorption coefficient, σsc, is the internal to the tissue slab, n̂ is a vector outward normal to
scattering coefficient, and β is the extinction coefficient, the surface, ŝ is a unit vector with the direction of Ii, such
which is the sum of the absorption and scattering coefficients. that n̂ · ŝ = cos(θi ), being θi relative to the surface normal.
The subscript  indicates dependence with respect to the wave- The radiative heat flux crossing an element of area nor-
length, while the subscript sc stands for scattering. The last mal to the direction of x is a result of intensities incident
term of the right-hand side of the RTE accounts for the portion from all directions. Thus, it can be computed as,
of the radiative energy coming from all possible directions that  4π
is scattered toward the considered direction of propagation. qr,x = I(�) cos(θ)d� (8)
The I,i is the intensity of radiation in the incidence direction, �=0
as indicated by the subscript i;  and i are the coordinates of where θ is relative to x.
the solid angles in the directions of propagation and incidence, Two different numerical methods were applied for
respectively; and � (�, �i ) is the scattering phase function, solving the radiative transfer equation, namely, discrete
which describes the probability that a radiation ray coming ordinate method with eighth order of approximation for
from the direction i be scattered into the direction . the angular discretization (S8) and spherical harmonics
The specific conditions regarding the PTT problems exam- with the first order of approximation (P1-approximation).
ined here allow some simplifications of Eq. (3). The tem- Both S8 and P1-approximation were implemented in a
perature necessary to induce hyperthermia is low, about 43 Fortran90 code and coupled to the same finite volume
°C [2]. Thus, emission of radiation from the tissue is insig- code also written in Fortran90, which contains routines
nificant compared to the laser power, and the term contain- for the conduction and perfusion problems to provide the
ing the blackbody intensity, which accounts for emission, can transient solution of the coupled radiation, conduction
be neglected. Also, the scattering was assumed as isotropic, and perfusion heat transfer. The finite volume method was
leading to  = 1. Also, as lasers are monochromatic, the implemented following the procedures presented by Mal-
dependence of properties with the wavelength is not required. iska [25], while the discrete ordinate and P1-approxima-
With these simplifications, Eq. (3) can be rewritten as tion were implemented according to the procedures pre-
sented by Howell et al. [21], and Modest [22]. The codes
4π
are able to consider nonuniform meshes, since it is impor-

dI σsc
= −βI + Ii (�i )d�i (4) tant to handle with the nonhomogeneities of biological
ds 4π �i =0
tissues and accurately represent the temperature gradients
The intensity in Eq. (4) has two components: one colli- which occur in PTT.
mated coming directly from the laser, and another diffuse The same finite volume code was applied to the two
that arises due to scattering. However, as presented by solution methods examined for the radiative transfer equa-
Modest [22], the problem can be reduced to one with solely tion. Therefore, the results presented below allow a direct
diffuse radiation by placing the effects of the collimated comparison between the discrete ordinate and P1-approxi-
radiation in a source term, Sc: mation, as shown in the next section.
σsc 4π

dI
= −βI + Ii (�i )d�i + Sc (5)
ds 4π �i =0 3 Results
where
  s  To compare the P1-approximation with the discrete ordi-
1 ∗ nate method, a set of test problems were solved for two tis-
Sc = qo (1 − Re ) exp − βds (6)
4π 0 sue slabs composed of different layers, as follows.

13
 J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.

Fig. 1  Representation of the
skin cancer [10]

Fig. 2  Periodic irradiation of the tissue by the laser light [10]

Table 1  Properties of the tissue for the skin cancer [10]

Tissue Epidermis Cancer Papillary Reticular Fat
tumor dermis dermis

ρ, kg/m3 1200 1030 1200 1200 1000

cp, J/(kg 3589 3582 3300 3300 3674
K)
k, W/(mK) 0.235 0.558 0.445 0.445 0.185
q̇, W/m3 0 3680 368.1 368.1 368.3
vb, kg/m3 0 9.4 0.4 5.2 1
κ, m−1 180 50 20 20 10
σsc, m−1 2360 600 200 200 400
Fig. 3  Temperature distribution for the skin cancer at 10, 25, 35, and
50 s: a tissue without nanoparticles and b tissue embedded with gold
3.1 Skin cancer nanoshells

This case was based on that presented by Dombrovsky cancer tumor, papillary dermis, reticular dermis, and fat, as
et al. [10]. The geometry consists of an one-dimensional represented by Fig. 1. The slab is irradiated from the left
slab with five different layers, corresponding to epidermis, by collimated laser radiation with wavelength of 0.6328

13
J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
μm. The emissive power of the laser is 20 kW/m2, and is
imposed on the tissue periodically, according to the func-
tion shown in Fig. 2. It is assumed that all radiative energy
incident on the slab penetrates the tissue, that is, the reflec-
tivity of the external surface of the slab, appearing in Eqs.
(6) and (7), is Re = 0. Internally, the reflectivity of the sur-
face boundaries are R = 1, at the left, and R = 0.49, at the
right. The conduction boundary conditions for Eq. (2) are
prescribed temperature of 37 °C, on the left surface, and
convective heat transfer, on the right, for simulating heat
transfer to inward body tissues. For the inner boundary,
the convective heat transfer coefficient is h = 50 W/(m2K)
[10], while the initial temperature and the temperature of
the surrounding medium exchanging heat with the surface
on the right are both equal to 37 °C. The properties of the
tissue layers without nanoparticles are shown in Table 1.
Figure 3a presents the temperatures as a function of the
depth in the tissue at four different instants of the periodic
heating process: 10, 25, 35, and 50 s. The temperatures
were computed with the P1-approximation and discrete
ordinate method with eighth order of angular discretiza-
tion (S8). The results obtained with the two methods agreed
well, the temperature presented similar profile, the maxi-
mum difference was about 0.3 °C for 35 s of heating, and
the relative difference was not higher than 0.75 %. Further-
more, an interesting observation which can be made by
inspecting Fig. 3a is that the peak of temperature occurs
about 1.5 mm deep in the tissue, away from the tumor. In
this case, the laser heating is more likely to kill healthy
cells than the cells in the tumor region. Thus, to reach tem-
peratures sufficiently high to kill cancerous cells, healthy
tissues would be overheated to temperatures even higher,
which would be harmful for the patient.
The absorption of heat in the tumor region can be
increased using nanoparticles. Figure 3b shows the tem-
perature distribution when the first and second layers,
representing the epidermis and the tumor are embedded
with nanoparticles, which are gold nanoshells. The opti-
cal properties of the tissue layers with the nanoshells were
obtained in accordance with the procedure presented by
Dombrovsky et al. [10], using the following equations
to compute, respectively, the absorption and scattering
coefficients:
Qa
κ = κt + 0.75fv (9)
r particles, since the particles increase radiation absorption.
Qs
σsc = σsc,t + 0.75fv (10)
r occurred in the first two tissue layers and were about 5 %.
where Qa and Qs are the dimensionless efficiency factor and
transport efficiency factor of scattering for single particles,
κt and σsc,t are the absorption and scattering coefficients
of the tissue without nanoparticles, r is the radius of the
nanoparticles, and fv is the volume fraction of the nanopar-
ticles relative to the embedded tissue.
Dombrovsky et al. [10] considered that the radia-
tion source is a helium-–neon laser with wavelength of
0.6328 μm, and that the nanoparticles are silica-core gold
nanoshells with radius r = 20 nm (which give the maxi-
mum absorption at the refered wavelength). The radius of
the silica core was considered equal to 0.725r. For such
nanoparticles, and assuming a refractive index n = 1.45 rel-
ative to the ambient human tissues, Dombrovsky et al. [10]
applied the Mie theory to estimate the following values for
the efficiency factors: Qa = 7.828 and Qs = 1.144. Assum-
ing a volume fraction of the nanoparticles fv = 10−5, Eqs.
(9) and (10) provide κ = 3115.6 m−1 and σsc = 2789 m−1,
for the epidermis, and κ = 2985.5 m−1 and σsc = 1029
m−1, for the tumor. In layers without nanoparticles, fv = 0,
and thus, the absorption and scattering coefficients reduce
to κ = κt and σsc = σsc,t.
As can be seen in Fig. 3a, b, the peak temperature was
moved to the tumor region (0.3 mm < x < 0.4 mm) when
nanoparticles were used. Similarly to the case without nan-
oparticles, the P1-approximation and S8 results presented
good agreement, with a difference lower than 1 % for the
peak temperature.
The results for the temperature shown in Fig. 3a, b were
obtained with the presence of conduction and blood perfu-
sion, since both are relevant in PTT. A comparison of the
S8 and P1-approximation predictions in a pure radiation
problem is presented in Fig. 4a, b. The divergence of the
radiative heat flux is shown: (a) in the tissue without nan-
oparticles, and (b) in the tissue embedded with nanopar-
ticles. In the case without nanoparticles (see Fig. 4a), the
S8 predicted higher radiation absorption than that obtained
with the P1-approximation in all layers, which is consistent
with the higher temperatures predicted using the S8 method
(see Fig. 3a). The main differences in the divergence of the
radiative heat flux occurred in the first two tissues; the dif-
ferences were about 10% near the boundary and higher in
the region of the tumor. However, the absorption coefficient
is relatively small in the locations where the higher errors
in the divergence of the radiative flux do occur, and thus
have small influence on the temperature.
In the case of the tissue embedded with nanoparticles,
the divergence of the radiative heat flux, shown in Fig. 4b,
is considerably higher than that for the case without nano-
The results obtained with the S8 and P1-approximation
presented good agreement: the maximum differences
Differently than for the tissue without nanoparticles, the
divergence of the radiative heat flux obtained with the
S8 was lower than that obtained with the P1-approxima-
tion in the region where the peak temperature occurs.
13

Fig. 4  Divergence of the radiative heat flux for the skin cancer:
a tissue without nanoparticles and b tissue embedded with gold
nanoshells
A consistent behaviour was verified in the results for
the temperature, since now is the S8 method, instead
of the P1-approximation, which predicts a higher peak
temperature.
The addition of nanoparticles in the two first layers of
tissue makes the results for the divergence of the radiation
heat flux obtained with the S8 and P1 methods compare
better, as can be seen in Fig. 4. This is consistent with the
results for the temperature, shown in Fig. 3, which also pre-
sented better agreement in the two first layers. Although the
third, fourth, and fifth deeper tissue layers are not embed-
ded with nanoparticles and, thus, their optical proper-
ties remain unchanged, the temperature profile continues
presenting better agreement as compared with the case in
which no nanoparticles are embedded in the two first lay-
ers. It occurs because the nanoparticles strongly increase
the absorption in the region of the epidermis and tumor,
which makes the radiation absorption relatively irrelevant
in the three deeper tissue layers, and therefore, radiation
absorption in this region without nanoparticles has no sig-
nificant effect on the heat transfer process, which is domi-
nated by conduction.
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J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
Fig. 5  Temperature distribution for the skin cancer at 35 s in the tis-
sue embedded with gold nanoshells
In general, the results presented by Figs. 3 and 4 show
that the temperatures predicted by both methods examined
here exhibit small discrepancies. In fact, although some
significant differences in the divergence of the radiative
heat flux were verified, they occurred when the radiation
absorption was relatively low and did not strongly affected
the temperature field.
To address the possibility of further model reduction for
the radiative transfer problem, the diffusive contribution of
the radiation intensity was neglected for the computation of
the divergence of the radiative flux, which was computed
only with the collimated intensity given by Beer–Lambert’s
law. The temperature variation for the case of the tissues
containing nanoparticles is presented by Fig. 5, at time
t = 35 s, for the radiation solutions given by discrete ordi-
nates, P1-approximation and Beer–Lambert’s law. The dis-
crepancy between the temperature that results from Beer–
Lambert’s law is 0.75 °C in the region of the tumor, but
much larger in deeper regions. Moreover, the temperature
profile obtained with the Beer–Lambert law differs from
that obtained with the two other methods. Therefore, while
the P1-approximation provides an accurate prediction of
the temperature in the region, Beer–Lambert’s law results
in inappropriate predictions for the hyperthermia treatment
in this skin problem.
For the results presented above, the layers representing
the dermis, tumor, papillary dermis, reticular dermis, and
fat were discretized with 20, 40, 16, 32, and 64 finite vol-
umes. Such number of volumes were selected based on a
grid convergence analysis. Also, the S8 solution with dis-
crete ordinates were compared with those for lower orders
(S6 and S4) and no significant differences were verified.
All presented results were obtained using an Intel® Core™
i7-4770S @ 3.10 GHz, in a 64-bit system, with 8 GiB
J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
Fig. 6  Representation of the breast cancer
Table 2  Properties of the tissues for the breast cancer
Tissue Breast gland Cancer tumor
ρ, kg/m3 1050 1050
cp, J/(kg K) 3770 3770
k, W/(mK) 0.48 0.48
q̇, W/m3 420 3680
κ, m−1 3 8.4
σsc, m−1 1200 1500
of RAM. The computational time required to obatin the
P1-approximation results was 266 s, for the case without
nanoparticles, and 263 s, for the case with nanoparticles,
while the time required to obtain the S8 results was 334 s,
for the case without nanoparticles, and 327 s, for the case
with nanoparticles.
3.2 Breast cancer
For this case, the geometry once again was one-dimen-
sional, and the scattering was assumed as isotropic. How-
ever, the tissue properties, dimensions and laser power were
selected to simulate the heat transfer processes occurring in
a photothermal treatment of breast cancer. The geometry is
represented in Fig. 6, while the layers properties are given in
Table 2. The specific heat, density, and thermal conductiv-
ity were obtained from He et al. [26], the metabolic heat of
the tumor was estimated based on the analysis presented by
Dombrovsky et al. [10], the metabolic heat generated by the
gland was taken from Vo-Dinh [27], and the optical proper-
ties of the tumor and breast gland were obtained from Fatini
[28]. The laser irradiates the left surface and is periodically
applied according to the function shown in Fig. 2, as in the
previous case. However, the laser emissive power is now 28
kW/m2. The boundary conditions are exactly the same as
that of the case involving the skin cancer.
Fig. 7  Temperature distribution for the breast cancer at 10, 25, 35,
and 50 s: a tissue without nanoparticles and b tissue embedded with
gold nanoshells
Results were obtained for the tissue without nanoparti-
cles and when the 2/3 final part of the layer corresponding
to the tumor was embedded with gold nanoshells with the
goal of bringing the peak temperature to the tumor region.
The nanoparticles are shells with the same features as for
the skin cancer case. The properties of the tissue embed-
ded with these particles were again determined accord-
ing to the procedure presented by Dombrovsky et al. [10],
using Eqs. (9) and (10). However, at this time the volume
fraction of the nanoshells relative to the embedded tissue
was fv = 2·10−7, which resulted in the following values of
absorption and scattering coefficients: κ = 67.11 m−1 and
σsc = 1508.58 m−1.
Figure 7a, b present the temperature distributions at dif-
ferent times, obtained for the tumor without and loaded
with nanoparticles, respectively. These figures show that,
with the addition of nanoparticles, the peak temperature
increases from approximately 41 °C to almost 44.5 °C,
while shifts 2 mm to right, getting closer to the center of
13

Fig. 8  Divergence of the radiative heat flux for the breast cancer:
a tissue without nanoparticles and b tissue embedded with gold
nanoshells
the tumor region. For this case, the maximum temperature
difference obtained with the P1-approximation and S8 dis-
crete ordinates is less than 1 %, both with the tumor con-
taining or not containing nanoparticles.
Results for the divergence of the radiative heat flux
are presented for the tumor without and with nanopar-
ticles, respectively by Fig. 8a, b. For the tumor without
nanoparticles, the larger discrepancies occur at the irradi-
ated boundary and at the region of maximum divergence.
However, the discrepancies between the two solutions
decrease for deeper regions farther from the external sur-
face. For the case of the tumor containing nanoparticles,
two peaks of the divergence of the heat flux are observed:
one ahead of the tumor and another ahead of the region
containing nanoparticles inside the tumor. Moreover, the
results obtained with S8 discrete ordinates and P1-approx-
imation are very similar in the region containing nanopar-
ticles, with larger discrepancies at the boundary, and at
the first peak of the divergence of the radiative heat flux.
Anyhow, these local large discrepancies do not signifi-
cantly affect the temperature distribution in the region, as
can be noticed in Fig. 7a, b.
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J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
Fig. 9  Temperature distribution for the breast cancer at 35 s in the
tissue embedded with gold nanoshells
Figure 9 shows results for the temperature at 35 s for the
case in which the radiation solution was obtained with the
Beer–Lambert law, discrete ordinates, and P1-approxima-
tion. The results obtained with the simpler Beer–Lambert
law were totally discrepant from those obtained with the
two other methods; the peak temperature differed consid-
erably in its location and value, which was about 14 °C
higher than those obtained with the S8 and P1-approxima-
tion methods. These results demonstrate that the chosen
radiation model has an important impact on the tempera-
ture distribution and indicate that the simplified Beer–Lam-
bert’s model, which neglects the diffusive contribution for
the radiation intensity, cannot be used for the prediction of
the temperature distribution in this case dealing with breast
cancer.
Similarly to the case involving skin cancer, nonuniform
finite volumes were used. The first three layers representing
gland, tumor, and gland were discretized using 80, 1440,
and 140 volumes, respectively. Such number of volumes
were based on a grid convergence analysis. Also, the S8
discrete ordinates solution was converged with respect to
lower orders of angular discretization, such as, S6 and S4.
The computational time required to obtain the P1-approxi-
mation results with and without nanoparticles was, respec-
tively, 1838 and 1832 s. In the case of the S8 method, the
computational time was 2420 s, for the case without nano-
particles, and 2412 s when nanoparticles were added.
4 Conclusion
The P1-approximation is a simple and computation-
ally cheap method to solve radiation heat transfer prob-
lems. Thus, its application for time-consuming coupled
J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng.
simulations such that relative to photothermal therapy
(PTT) is highly desirable. However, the method is known
to become inaccurate under certain conditions. Aiming at
evaluating the accuracy of the P1-approximation for PTT
simulations, the method was applied to tackle the radia-
tion heat transfer in two test problems, and the results
were compared with other results obtained with the accu-
rate discrete ordinate method. The test problems required
the one-dimensional coupled solution of conduction, blood
perfusion, and radiation in isotropically scattering media.
Two tissue slabs were considered: one representing a case
of skin cancer and another representing a case of breast
cancer. In both cases, simulations were performed for tis-
sues with and without gold nanoshells embedded in. The
obtained results were presented for the time-dependent
temperature distribution, which is usually the quantity of
interests in PTT, as well as for the divergence of the radia-
tive heat flux, to compare the methods in a pure radiation
problem.
Comparing the divergence of the radiative heat flux with
the predicted temperature, it was demonstrated how varia-
tions in the radiation results are perceived on the tempera-
ture profile. The differences in the divergence of the radia-
tive heat flux obtained with the S8 and P1-approximation
were higher in regions of the tissue where the absorption
was relatively low so that having minor influence on the
temperature distribution. In general, the profiles of the
divergence of the radiative heat flux obtained with the S8
and P1-approximation were similar, and the values pre-
sented good agreement where the absorption was higher.
Thus, results for the temperature computed using both
methods presented good agreement. Additionally, results
for the temperature were obtained using a much simpler
approach for the radiation solution, the Beer–Lambert law.
The results were discrepant from that obtained with the
S8 and P1-approximation, thus showing that the radiation
model can have considerable influence on the temperature
field.
For future works, we suggest to extend the analysis to
multidimensional geometries and include anisotropic scat-
tering of radiation, since those are factors which may lead
to a loss of accuracy in the P1-approximation results.
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