A photothermal model of selective photothermolysis with dynamically changing vaporization temperature.

The theory of selective photothermolysis (SP) is used in many fields of laser surgery and medicine. As several parameters and a number of complicated photothermal interactions are involved in SP, numerical simulations have been providing an important and effective way in SP studies. However, with different photothermal models of SP, simulated results differ considerably. In addition, insufficient attention has been paid to tissue pressure variation during SP in these models, so that vessel rupture and other clinical phenomena cannot be explained. A novel photothermal model of SP was proposed using a Monte Carlo method to simulate the laser transport in the tissue, a heat transfer equation with dynamically changing vaporization temperature to calculate the temperature distribution, and the Arrhenius equation to predict the thermal damage. A factor of trapped vaporized tissue water k was introduced to describe the effects on tissue pressure, temperature, and other related parameters. It was shown that the simulation results are affected significantly by k. Temperature and thermal damage volume are almost identical, respectively, to those obtained with models with vaporization at 100°C and models without vaporization when k = 0 and 1, while thermal damage volume is close to that obtained with models of vaporization at 110°C and 130°C, respectively, when k = 0.022 and k = 0.18. To some extent, the current models without vaporization and models with vaporization at constant temperature can be regarded as special cases at specific situations of this new photothermal model of SP. In addition, more descriptive simulation results, such as temperature, thermal damage, and pressure, are accessible with this model, although the accuracy depends on the value of k, the estimation of which is planned as future work.