Computational study of the effect of gradient magnetic field in navigation of spherical particles

Abstract

The use of spherical magnetic nanoparticles that are coated with drugs and can be navigated in arteries to attack tumors is proposed as an alternative to chemotherapy. Navigation of particles is due to magnetic field gradients that may be produced in an MRI device. In the present work, a computational study for the evaluation of the magnitude of the gradient magnetic field for particles navigation in Y bifurcations is presented. For this purpose, the presented method solves for the fluid flow and includes all the important forces that act on the particles in their discrete motion. The method is based on an iteration algorithm that adjusts the gradient magnetic field to minimize the particles' deviation from a desired trajectory. Using the above mentioned method, the appropriate range of the gradient magnetic field for optimum navigation of nanoparticles's aggregation is found. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.