Efficient Therapy Planning via Model Reduction for Laser-Induced Interstitial Thermotherapy

We investigate the planning of minimally invasive tumor treatments via laser-induced thermotherapy. The goal is to control the laser in order to obtain an optimal treatment, e.g. eradicating the tumor, while leaving as much healthy tissue unharmed as possible. To this end, we define a PDE-constrained optimal control problem. As these problems are usually computationally expensive, we propose a simplified modeling approach using reduced-order models. Numerical results illustrate the viability of our approach.