Optimal control of treatment time in a diffuse interface model of tumor growth

Abstract

We consider an optimal control problem for a diffuse interface model of tumor growth. The state equations couples a Cahn-Hilliard equation and a reaction-diffusion equation, which models the growth of a tumor in the presence of a nutrient and surrounded by host tissue. The introduction of cytotoxic drugs into the system serves to eliminate the tumor cells and in this setting the concentration of the cytotoxic drugs will act as the control variable. Furthermore, we allow the objective functional to depend on a free time variable, which represents the unknown treatment time to be optimized. As a result, we obtain first order necessary optimality conditions for both the cytotoxic concentration and the treatment time.