EDUCATION:

RESEARCH INTERESTS:                                              

  Biomedical optics and medical laser applications

Laser Assisted Cryosurgery

Mentor: Guillermo Aguilar

University of California, Riverside

Cryosurgery is an alternative treatment for certain types of cancers, in particular prostate cancer. There are, however, some shortcomings to this method that preclude its widespread use.  For instance, in many cases, it is not fully possible to destroy the target tissue (prostate) without causing collateral damage to the urethral and/or rectum wall.  To overcome this problem, current cryosurgical procedures rely on warm water flow through the urethral canal to provide the necessary heat to prevent the urethra wall from freezing.  However, this method is limited and ineffective.  Cryosurgery assisted by laser heating may provide the heat necessary to maintain the wall temperature above the damage threshold for cryoinjury, independent of the application time of the cryogen probe and without limiting so severely the cryoablation of the prostate. In this scenario is that this investigation proposes the use of laser irradiation as a means to protect the urethral wall during cryosurgery. The present investigation determines the protecting effect achieved by laser irradiation in a simple one-dimensional geometry and compares it to that obtained by more conventional means of heating, such as warm water flow and cryoheaters. A computer simulation code is also developed to assess the accuracy with which laser heating can prevent the frozen tissue from propagating beyond pre-determined boundaries. The simulated results are then compared to the experimental results.  Once the results are analyzed the sought conditions, which maximize lethality of carcinogenic tissue and protection of benign tissue, will be published.

CURRENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

February 2007 (Power Point Presentation)