On the Modelling of Perfusion in the Simulation of RF-Ablation

We compare three different strategies for the modelling of blood-perfusion in large vessels in a well known mathematical model for the simulation of radio-frequency ablation of tumors. The first approach models the perfusion with a heat-sink on the right hand side of the bioheat-transfer equation, the second approach considers the temperature to be fixed to the body-temperature and thus sets a Dirichlet boundary condition in the vessels. In the last approach we model the perfusion by increasing the effective diffusivity. The models are discretized using a standard finite element approach. The paper gives a review of the general model, the FE discretization, and finally compares results of the three perfusion modelling approaches on artificial and real data sets.