Sumit Kumar

By Sumit Kumar

The laser has been widely used in medical fields. One application of the laser is laser-based photo-thermal therapy, wherein the short-pulsed laser is generally used to destroy the cancerous cells. The efficacy of the laser-based photo-thermal therapy can be improved if we minimize the thermal damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. So, it is essential to understand the laser-tissue interaction and thermal behavior of biological tissue during laser-based photo-thermal therapy. The light propagation through the biological tissue is generally mathematically modeled by the radiative heat transfer equation (RTE). The RTE has been solved using the discrete ordinate method (DOM) to determine the intensity inside the laser-irradiated biological tissue. Consequently, the absorbed photon energy act as the source term in the Fourier/non-Fourier model-based bio-heat transfer equation to determine the temperature distribution inside the biological tissue subjected to short-pulse laser irradiation. The non-Fourier model-based bio-heat transfer equation is numerically solved using the finite volume method (FVM). The numerical results have been compared with the analytical results obtained using the finite integral transform (FIT) technique. A comparative study between the Fourier and non-Fourier heat conduction models has also been carried out.

Part of the book: Terahertz, Ultrafast Lasers and Their Medical and Industrial Applications