Paper detail

Thermal modelling for endocardiac radiofrequency ablation: comparison of hyperbolic bioheat equation and Pennes bioheat equation with finite element method

The objectives of this study are to model the endocardiac radiofrequency (RF) ablation procedure and to employ the Hyperbolic Bioheat Equation (HBE), which takes the thermal wave behaviour into account, comparing the results with those obtained using the common Pennes Bioheat Equation (BE) method. A complex model is created to cover particular endocardiac physical and geometry environment. Finite Element Method (FEM) is adopted to study the model with both BE and HBE methods. Different convection coefficients and voltages are applied to simulate different conditions. Lesion size, max temperature and specified position temperature are selected as criteria to evaluate the simulated results. The study found that during ablation, the lesion size difference ratio can reach 20% in some periods. The difference is obvious and cannot be neglected.