Abdelgawad, MohamedAlyamani, Yaqeen Abdulaziz2022-02-072022-02-072021-1235.232-2021.72http://hdl.handle.net/11073/21621A Master of Science thesis in Mechanical Engineering by Yaqeen Abdulaziz Alyamani entitled, “Numerical Modeling of Nanoparticle-Assisted Laser Thermal Ablation of Tumors”, submitted in December 2021. Thesis advisor is Dr. Mohamed Abdelgawad. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).The field of thermal ablation of cancer is growing rapidly in the technical and clinical sectors. Image-guided non-invasive techniques in particular have shown high potential for cancer therapy. Many types of cancer are diagnosed by imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, or computed tomography (CT) scan. When cancer is detected, usually open surgery resection is the preferred procedure in most cases of focal tumors. Thermal ablation of tumors appeared recently as a less invasive cancer treatment technique. It offers many advantages over traditional resection surgery including less pain and shorter recovery time. To increase the selectivity of thermal ablation, photothermal therapy was recently introduced as a way to ablate tumors without affecting surrounding healthy tissue. In photothermal therapy, photothermal agents such as nanoparticles (NPs) are introduced into tumors to increase their energy absorption capacity significantly compared to surrounding tissue. In this thesis, a numerical model of laser ablation was built to investigate the effect of changing optical and physical properties of the tumor and surrounding tissue, as a result of adding photothermal agents. The effect of changing both the absorption and scattering coefficients of the tumor and tissue on the resulting temperature was investigated. In addition, properties of laser source such as laser intensity, beam radius, number of applied beams, and total power were investigated. It was found that laser intensity has the most significant effect on the resulting temperature. Controlling the radius of the laser beam and the number of applied beams can help greatly adjust the uniformity of the generated temperature inside the tumor. Moreover, the absorption coefficient had a more significant effect than the scattering coefficient on the temperature distribution. By controlling the location of injecting the NPs inside the tumor (e.g. in the core or the periphery of the tumor) a more localized temperature rise inside the tumor was achievable. The effect of anisotropic thermal conductivity of biological tissue was also considered and results showed that it can considerably change the anticipated temperature distribution inside the tumor and tissue.en-USLaser ablationPenn’s bioheat equationBeer Lambert’s LawNanoparticlesTumorsPhotothermal therapyThesis