Study of bioheat transfer phase change during cryosurgery for an irregular tumor tissue using EFGM

TL;DR

This paper models bioheat transfer during cryosurgery for irregular tumors using EFGM, incorporating phase change and nanoparticles to improve treatment precision and protect healthy tissue.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation approach combining effective heat capacity and EFGM to analyze nanoparticle-enhanced cryosurgery in irregular tumor tissues.

Findings

Nanoparticles improve ice ball control during cryosurgery.

Interfacial layer effects influence freezing dynamics.

Nanoparticle size and concentration significantly affect heat transfer.

Abstract

Cryosurgery has been consistently used as an effective treatment to eradicate irregular tumor tissues. During this process, many difficulties occur such as intense cooling may also damage the neighboring normal tissues due to the release of large amount of cold from the cooling probe. In order to protect the normal tissues in the vicinity of target tumor tissues, coolant was released in a regulated manner accompanied with the nanoparticle to regulate the size and orientation of ice balls formed together with improved probe capacity. The phase change occurs in the target tumor tissues during cryosurgery treatment. The effective heat capacity method is used for simulation of phase change in bio-heat transfer equation to take into account the latent heat of phase transition. The bio-heat transfer equation is solved by using element free Galerkin method (EFGM) to simulate the phase change problem of biological tissues subject to nano cryosurgery. In this study, Murshed model with cylindrical nanoparticles is used for the high thermal conductivity of nanofluids as compared to Leong Model with the spherical nanoparticle. The important effects of the interfacial layer at the mushy region (i.e. liquid to the solid interface), size and concentration of nanoparticles are shown on the freezing process. This type of problem has applications in biomedical treatment such as drug delivery. Application of cryosurgery in bio-fluids used for drug delivery in cancer therapy can be made more efficient in the presence of nanoparticles (such as Iron oxide ($Fe_{3}O_{4}$), alumina ($Al_{2}O_{3}$) and gold ($Au$)).