Computational study on 2D three-phase lag bioheat model during cryosurgery using RBF meshfree method

Abstract

Biological tissue has a multidimensional and non-homogeneous inner structure by nature. The temperature distribution and freezing front locations in biological tissue are crucial to optimizing the damage to tissue during cryosurgery. There is a need for a good mathematical model and effective simulation techniques to predict the effectiveness of the therapy. The present study concerns the numerical study of phase change phenomena during cryosurgery using the three-phase lag (TPL) bioheat model in arbitrary soft tissue domains, i.e., circular (Γ1), ameba-like (Γ2), and multiconnected (Γ3). We employ the effective heat capacity formulation to solve the nonlinear governing equation. The Gaussian radial basis function and Crank–Nicolson finite difference approximation are applied for spatial and time derivatives, respectively. Using the present algorithm, we study the impact of phase lag (τv) due to thermal displacement involved in the TPL model on phase change interface position and thermal distribution in all three domains. The obtained results may be beneficial in the field of oncology.