Study of heat transfer and flow within atherosclerotic plaques in a focused ultrasound field

Focused ultrasound has been widely used for the thermotherapy of soft tissue lesions. In this process, non-Fourier heat conduction and porous medium theory has to be considered because of non-homogeneous media. The study estimates the effects of the temperature lag and porous medium on the plaque ablation and drug treatment by focused ultrasound (FU). This study integrated TWMBT with the porous media heat transfer equation to characterize the internal temperature distribution within atherosclerotic plaque (AP) during FU application. The coupling equations are solved with finite element method. This paper focuses on the effects of porosity, permeability, and attenuation coefficient on the temperature and flow rate within the AP. The results consider artery wall thickness on heating of AP by FU. In addition, this study qualitatively analyzed the differences among the Pennes, TWMBT, and porous media heat conduction equations. The results show that the temperature responses of biological tissues exhibits lagging behaviors, which are inherently related to the physical time scale. Because of the disparities in the physical characteristics of the target and surrounding tissues, fluid flow within AP can have an impact on the distribution of tissue temperature, the direction of flow between solid tissues is determined by the permeability coefficient and ultrasonic intensity. The permeability coefficient, frequency and attenuation coefficient have a significant effect on the fluid flow within AP. Both heat dissipation and heat convergence are characteristics of fluid flow within the tissue, the focal location and the physical property parameters may affect the fluid heat dissipation and heat collection properties within the tissue. Furthermore, the temperature peak may not occur at the focus. The model can provide an analytical template for different types of precise thermal ablation AP, including radiofrequency ablation, microwave therapy, and laser ablation besides FU ablation, and can also provide a case for adjunctive drug transport.