Background and objective

The thermal therapy is a minimally invasive technique used as an alternative approach to conventional cancer treatments. There is an increasing concern about the accuracy of the thermal simulation during the process of tumor ablation. This study is aimed at investigating the effect of finite speed of heat propagation in the biological lung tissue, experimentally and numerically.

Methods

In the experimental study, a boundary heat flux is applied to the lung tissue specimens and the temperature variation is measured during a transient heat transfer procedure. In the numerical study, a code is developed based on the finite volume method to solve the classical bio-heat transfer, the Cattaneo and Vernotte, and the Dual-phase-lag (DPL) equations. The thermal response of tissue during the experiments is compared with the predictions of the three heat transfer models.

Results

It is found that the trend of temperature variation by the DPL model resembles the experimental results. The experimental observation in parallel with the numerical results reveals that the accumulated thermal energy diffuses to the surrounding tissue with a slower rate in comparison with the conventional bio-heat transfer model. The DPL model is implemented to study the temperature elevation in the laser irradiation to lung tissue in the presence of gold nanoparticles (GNPs). It is concluded that the extent of the necrotic tumoral region and the area of the damaged healthy tissue are reduced, when the non-Fourier heat transfer is taken into account.

Conclusions

Results show that considering the phase lags is crucial in planning for an effective thermal treatment, in which the cancerous tissue is ablated and the surrounding tissues are preserved from irreversible thermal damage.

中文翻译：

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基于实验数据的肺组织非傅立叶热响应数值分析及其在激光治疗中的应用

背景和目标

热疗法是一种微创技术，用作常规癌症治疗的替代方法。人们越来越关注肿瘤消融过程中热模拟的准确性。这项研究旨在通过实验和数值研究有限的热量在生物肺组织中的传播速度。

方法

在实验研究中，将边界热通量应用于肺组织标本，并在瞬态传热过程中测量温度变化。在数值研究中，基于有限体积方法开发了一个代码，以解决经典的生物传热，Cattaneo和Vernotte以及双相滞后（DPL）方程的问题。将实验期间组织的热响应与三种传热模型的预测进行比较。

结果

通过DPL模型发现温度变化趋势与实验结果相似。与数值结果平行的实验观察表明，与常规生物传热模型相比，累积的热能以较慢的速率扩散到周围组织。实施DPL模型以研究在存在金纳米颗粒（GNP）的情况下对肺组织进行激光照射时的温度升高。结论是，当考虑非傅立叶热传递时，坏死肿瘤区域的范围和受损健康组织的面积减小。

结论

结果表明，考虑到相位滞后对于规划有效的热处理至关重要，在该热处理中，癌组织被消融，周围组织得以免受不可逆的热损伤。