NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTGIATION OF CRYO-FREEZING WITH LARGE BLOOD VESSELS

Abstract

Cryosurgery is accepted as a favorable treatment option for eradicating undesirable cancerous tissue due to its minimally invasive nature. A finite difference study of a biological liver tissue undergoing cryo-freezing using the immersed boundary method (IBM) is presented in this study. The liver tissue is treated as a non-ideal material having temperature-dependent thermophysical properties. The influence of heating effect due to blood flow (through the vessel surface) has been investigated by applying the boundary condition-enforced IBM. Results have indicated that the heat source term due to the blood flow in the vessel embedded in the bioheat transfer equation significantly impacts the tissue temperature profiles and thermal gradient histories. The effects of the blood vessel structure and injected nanoparticles on the cryo-freezing of a clinically-extracted vascular tissue are numerically investigated. This improved cryo-freezing model is able to significantly simplify the mesh generation process at the boundary resulting in improved computational efficacy.