ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an emerging cancer treatment modality that uses visible light to activate photosensitizers to generate cytotoxic oxygen radicals to kill cancer cells. PDT employs the photochemical interaction of three components: light, photosensitizer, and oxygen. Tremendous progress has been made in the last three decades to understand quantitatively the basic biophysical mechanisms describing all three components, as well as their interactions. This chapter provides a complete description of the most important photochemical models describing the transport of light, the diffusion of photosensitizer drug, and the diffusion of oxygen through vasculature in human tissue (a turbid medium, where scattering dominates over absorption in the near-infrared region), as well as their interactions. At the current stage of development, it is still impossible to
CONTENTS
List of Symbols ............................................................................................................................ 232 10.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................233
