Two-phase heat transfer model for multiprobe cryosurgery

Abstract

Cryosurgery has been studied as an effective alternative to the conventional chemo and radiotherapies for treating various diseases including cancer. However, it is difficult to accurately quantify the temperature for determining the cell injury in tissue during cryosurgery. One way to overcome this difficulty is to develop numerical models to predict the temperature distribution during cryosurgery. However, contemporary models do not account for the fluid flow and heat transfer inside the cryoprobe(s) and its coupling with the heat transfer in the tissue outside the cryoprobe. In this study, we developed a two-phase flow model to predict the temperature distributions within multiple cryoprobe(s) and further coupled it with the heat transfer in the tissue, to reveal the synergistic effects among the cryoprobes on multi-probe cryosurgery. Our results show that coupled modeling of the heat transfer inside and outside the cryoprobes is crucial for accurate prediction of the cooling power of cryoprobes during multi-probe cryosurgery. The coupled model developed in this study represents a major step forward in mechanistically modeling cryosurgery and may be a valuable tool for optimizing the design of cryoprobes and the procedure of cryosurgery for treating various diseases.