Anish A. Gunjal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai
400076, India
Gulshan Kumar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai
400076, India
Atul Srivastava
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai
400076, India
Milind D. Atrey
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai
400076, India
The present work is concerned with optics-based experimental methodology in conjunction with a numerical model to track the freezing front in relevance to clinical cryosurgery. The optics configuration used is lensless Fourier transform digital holographic interferometry (DHI). Experiments are performed in water as well as in biogel as a tissue-mimicking phantom. In both the freezing mediums, the intensity data is used to identify and track the freezing front. The presence of strong convective currents in water is captured by the phase information recorded by the recorded holograms. Further, the phase maps are also used for the qualitative analysis of the temperature gradient outside the freezing medium. The numerical simulations are performed to track the freezing front using the in-house developed code. The numerical estimations are within 10% accuracy levels when compared with the experimental intensity data as well as recorded thermocouple data. The lensless Fourier transform DHI, in conjunction with the numerical simulations, provided a reliable way to obtain the whole field temperature, which could potentially be used to estimate the cooling performance of the cryoprobe.