Thermal Characterization of Ex Vivo Tissue.

Cancer treatment strategies require mathematical modeling of different coupled phenomena as well as uncertainty quantification of resulting computational solutions. Due to variability in thermophysical tissue properties among individuals, and even for the same individual under different physiological conditions, uncertainties in such parameters must appropriately be taken into account for accurate planning and control of hyperthermia and thermal ablation. The objective of this work is to estimate thermophysical properties of ex vivo tissue, with bovine muscle used for experiments. The Markov chain Monte Carlo method and approximate Bayesian computation algorithm are used to find solutions of the inverse problems examined in this work. These techniques provide a framework for not only solving the inverse problem but also finding uncertainty quantification.