A thermocouple thermometry system for ultrasound hyperthermia

A thermometry system designed to be used in the treatment of cancer by ultrasound hyperthermia is described. The system monitors tumor temperatures using 16 type T (copper-constantan) thermocouples and is controlled by a 12 MHz Intel 8031 microcomputer. An analog circuit board contains the thermocouple amplifiers, an analog multiplexer, scaling circuitry, and an analog to digital converter. A digital board contains the Intel 8031, program memory, data memory, as well as circuitry for control and data communications. Communication with the hyperthermia system control computer is serially by RS-232 with selectable baud rate. Since the thermocouple amplifiers may have slight differences in gain and offset, a calibrated offset is added to a lookup table value to obtain the proper display temperature to within +- 0.10C. The calibration routine, implemented in software, loads a nonvolatile random access memory chip with the proper offset values based on the outputs of each thermocouple channel at known temperatures which bracket a range of interest