Anisotropic scattering characteristics of nanoparticles in different morphologies: improving the temperature uniformity of tumors during thermal therapy using forward scattering

Precise control of the thermal damage area is the key issue during thermal therapy, which can be achieved by manipulating the light propagation in biological tissue. In the present work, a method is proposed to increase the uniformity of the specific absorption rate (SAR) distribution in tumors during laser-induced thermal therapy, which is proved to be effective in reducing the thermal damage of healthy tissue. In addition, a better way of manipulating light propagation in biological tissue is explored. It is found that the anisotropic scattering characteristics of nanoparticles are strongly dependent on their shapes, sizes, orientations, and incident wavelengths, which will strongly affect the light propagation in nanoparticle embedded biological tissue. Therefore, to obtain a better outcome from photothermal therapy, the scattering properties of nanoparticles are very important factors that need to be taken into consideration, along with the absorption efficiency. Further investigation finds that nanoparticles that predominantly scatter to the forward direction are favorable in obtaining a larger penetration depth of light, which will improve the uniformity of SAR and temperature distributions. This paper is meaningful for the application of nanoparticle-assisted laser-induced thermal therapy.