UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS IN BIOHEAT TRANSFER MODELING FOR TREATMENT PLANNING OF NANO-CRYOSURGERY

摘要

The ultimate aim of cryosurgery is to exactly kill all tumor cells within a closely defined region. For this purpose, we recently proposed an effective approach to perform conformal cryosurgical treatment of tumors by adjuvant use of nano-particles. Such a nanoparticle-enabled cryosurgical modality is termed as nano-cryosurgery. In this study, the uncertainties for the predicted temperatures of tissues in nano-cryosurgery due to approximate parameters were investigated. Contributions of uncertainties from the tissue area permeated with nanoparticles, the concentration of nanoparticles, and the thermal parameters of tissues were respectively analyzed, and the uncertainty limits for temperature distributions in these cases were also estimated. The uncertainty analysis presented in this study is expected to serve as a significant guide for performing a highly efficient and also completely safe nano-cryosurgical treatment.