Studying the Effects of Large Vessel Myocardial Perfusion in a Tissue-emulating Cardiac Phantom: In vitro and in...

Bioheat transfer is the study of heat transport applied in anatomy and physiology, and it is a critical tool when analyzing thermal exposures and various treatments and diagnostic methods. Blood flow significantly impacts heat transfer throughout the body, facilitating the diffusion of heat. Several models have been developed to quantify bioheat transfer and the effect of blood flow through tissue for many biological functions and medical procedures, one of which is radiofrequency ablation for cardiac arrhythmia. While some previous studies suggested that the effect of tissue perfusion may be critical only for highly vascularized organs, such as the liver, other studies concluded that the convective effect at the endocardium is a more significant factor than inner tissue perfusion. Nevertheless, significant improvements to models and assumptions are still required, as success rates for this procedure remain low for various arrhythmia types. In the effort to quantitatively assess the impact of considering (or not) the effect of tissue perfusion when modeling thermal ablation, this work focuses on studying the effects of perfusion using a tissue-mimicking phantom both experimentally and numerically. We conducted a parametric study of the flow rate through piping system embedded inside the tissue-mimicking phantom and analyzed the transient thermal profile at different locations and depths in the phantom. This study used a physical experimental setup and its homologous computational fluid dynamics model, with material properties and conditions for the numerical simulations from previous research. The numerical results were compared with the computational results. The findings of this study supported that perfusion impacts the transient thermal profile and that further research is needed to expand this foundation into clinically relevant experimentation.Clinical Relevance- This paper investigates the effect of tissue perfusion in thermal ablation modeling of cardiac tissue.