Cooling effect of thermally significant blood vessels in perfused tumor tissue during thermal therapy

This purpose of this article was focused on the cooling effects of thermally significant blood vessels on the extent of thermal lesion during heating treatments. The thermal modeling here based on the Pennes bio-heat transfer equation, describing the heat transfer of perfused tumor tissue, and the energy transport equation governing the heat convection and diffusion of the blood flow. The explicit finite difference method was used to solve the transient equation for the temperature field of a perfused tumor tissue encompassing a blood vessel in an axis-symmetric configuration during thermal therapy. As a result of simulation, the shortduration high-intensity heating is more effective on covering the treated tumor inside with a blood vessel 200 mu m in diameter. For a blood vessel inside tumor tissue with a diameter larger than 2 mu m, it is observed that neither longer heating duration nor higher heating power density is sufficient for complete necrosis of tumor. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.