John C. Bischof, Principal Investigator

Numerical Simulation and Optimization of Thermal and Injury Behavior During Multi-Probe Cryosurgery of the Prostate

Cryosurgery has been used to treat prostate diseases since it was introduced in the 1960s. In order to treat a large volume of diseased tissue, as occurs in prostate cancer, multiple probes have been widely used in recent years.

This research group is using the commercial software product ansys to develop a threedimensional finite element model mimicking the clinical situation of prostate cryosurgery. The input for the model is patient-specific data. The model will also include an injury model to predict the tissue damage with known thermal history. This numerical model can be used to optimize the probe positions and the treatment time to ensure complete killing of the disease tissue while saving as much of the healthy surrounding tissue as possible. This model will be a very useful tool for pre-treatment planning of cryosurgery of the prostate, and will also be very useful for understanding the injury mechanism of cryosurgery.

Research Group

Xiaoming He, Graduate Student Researcher