Comparison of two mathematical models for hyperthermic cell death

Abstract

Thermal treatments for tissue ablation rely upon the heating of cells past a threshold beyond which the cells are considered destroyed, denatured or killed. In this paper a theoretical, infinite state, lesion based model as proposed by Jung is modified to include a lesion healing process. An empirically based novel three-state model for cell death is proposed; and both models are fitted to experimental data of five different co-cultures of hepatocytes and lung fibroblasts with low RMS error. The models are compared and contrasted with regard to physiological relevance and ease of computational implementation. The suitability of substituting the infinite state model with a three state model is discussed and assessed with respect to multi-scale modeling. © 2010 International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.