Thermal-optoacoustic model for cardiac radiofrequency ablation

Abstract

The global objective of this thesis is to develop and validate a thermal model to predict the temperature of the tissue from an OA signal during thermal heating by radiofrequency ablation. In this way, we expect to demonstrate capabilities of OA imaging in temperature monitoring during RF ablation so that temperature maps of the tissue can be obtained during future ablation experiments. To get to the long term goal of developing a thermal-optoacoustic model, we will first aim to develop and validate a thermal model based on transient heat transfer theory. We aim to compare different analytical and numerical approaches to model the temperature in order to be able to choose the most accurate method. We further intend to validate the developed model in phantoms experiments and check whether it can be accurate for higher temperatures.