[en] A new concept for cryosurgery control is presented in this paper, a concept which has the potential to dramatically change the outcome of cryosurgery. Unlike other cryosurgery control techniques, which are based on controlling the thermal performance of the cryoprobe, this new concept is based on heating the treated tissue as a means of shaping the frozen region. The new controlling heater is termed a 'cryoheater'. The cryoheater is a complementary device to the cryoprobe and can work with any cryosurgery cooling technique. In the current pilot study, the new cryoheater is demonstrated in a gelatin solution and, using heat transfer simulations, it is studied in simulated cases of prostate cryosurgery. It is suggested that cryosurgery planning tools and optimization techniques must be developed before the concept of the cryoheater can be applied in its full capacity

[en] As a part of an ongoing effort to develop computerized planning tools for cryosurgery, an experimental study has been conducted to verify a recently developed numerical technique for bioheat transfer simulations. Experiments were performed on gelatin solution as a phantom material, using proprietary liquid-nitrogen cryoprobes. Urethral warming was simulated with the application of a cryoheater, which is a proprietary temperature-controlled electrical heater. The experimental design was aimed at creating a 2D heat transfer problem. Analysis of experimental results was based on reconstruction of the frozen region from video recordings, using a region-growing segmentation algorithm. Results of this study show an average disagreement of 2.9% in the size of the frozen region, between experimental data and numerical simulation of the same experiment, which validates both the recently developed algorithm for numerical simulations and the newly developed algorithm for segmentation from video recordings