The programme of this year's Electromagnetic Tuesday (EMiT) is again varied. In addition to the popular workshop, in which those who are interested can make their own working antenna and take it home with them, the Department of Electromagnetic Field has prepared five more stations with various experiments.
Use walkie-talkie to turn on the LED bulb and hide from the car radar
In one of them, the scientists will collect energy from electromagnetic waves provided by a handheld UHF radio station. A reactively loaded circular antenna array will collect this energy and a rectifier will convert it into direct current. This then lights the LED bulb.
Visitors will see another demonstration in the so-called radar corner. Here experiments will focus on the operation of FMCW automotive radar. Specifically, it will be target detection, determination of their parameters, tracking algorithms and scene reconstruction. And there will also be an experiment on making objects invisible in front of the automotive radar, which will certainly interest all drivers among students who often rush to lectures.
Scientists from the Department of Electromagnetic Field also played with invisibility at last year's Electromagnetic Tuesday, where visitors could even try to design an invisibility cloak. At the same time, they learned that invisibility is not an unattainable sci-fi idea thanks to the theoretical knowledge from the Electromagnetic Fields course. In fact, invisibility is merely the manipulation of optical paths around an object.
Microwave hyperthermia in cancer treatment
At the station called From Waves to Heat, visitors will see a demonstration of the principle of microwave hyperthermia in cancer treatment. "First, the poster will describe the biological basis of microwave hypertension. Its physical principle will be presented in the form of a demonstration of calculating the time course of 3D heating of the treated area in the Sim4Life EM field simulator. Emphasizing the information that first we have to calculate the 3D distribution of EM wave absorption and then the 4D temperature distribution. This simulation will be complemented by microwave heating of the agar phantom (simulator made of agar gel - note) with the possibility of monitoring the temperature rise using an IR camera," described Prof. Pavel Pechač, head of the Department of Electromagnetic Field.
It was the Department of Electromagnetic Field of the at the beginning of the 1980s that played a significant role in the progress in the cancer treatment using so-called microwave hyperthermia. In 1981, Prof. Jan Vrba, then still a young engineer, read an article in a foreign scientific journal describing waveguide applicators for microwave hyperemia. And then he developed the necessary technical equipment for the treatment of cancer patients using this completely new method. To date, more than 1500 patients in the Czech Republic have been treated with this method, many of whom have saved their lives and improved their quality of life. Prof. Vrba's research was followed up by several of his former PhD students and his two sons.
The physical-biological principle of hypertemia is that it raises the temperature in the tumour area from the usual 36.5 °C to a temperature range of 41 to 45 °C. At these temperatures, there is no thermal destruction of the tumour, i.e. no necrosis occurs. "The aim is to achieve so-called apoptosis, a state where the cell stops dividing. Basically, this is a simple physical mechanism to stop uncontrolled malignant growth. We don't destroy the cells directly, after some time they die on their own and the human body can cope with them," described Prof. Jan Vrba from the Department of Electromagnetic Field in an interview.
Below you can see a photo gallery from last year's Electromagnetic Tuesday. The author of the photos is Petr Neugebauer, FEE CTU.
