My team and myself are currently investigating a low-cost system that will be used to compare the effectiveness of different ablation techniques.
Ablation is a minimally invasive surgical technique used to kill body tissue. A “needle” is inserted into the tissue to be destroyed, a high frequency current ran through it to heat it rapidly, and the surrounding cells in the tissue heated to the point of fatality. This is often done to kill cancerous tissue or treat chronic pain by destroying the nerve endings that are sending the pain signals to the brain.
Because the process is so dependent on heat (the cells die at about 60 degrees Celsius), temperature monitoring during our experimental trials is critical. We are planning on performing trials on animal tissue, such as chicken breast or steak. The following image provides a vague idea of the concept I am shooting for:
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I would like to be able to insert an array/system of thermocouples into the tissue, whether that be chicken, steak, pork chop, etc, and get an accurate temperature reading based off the location of that thermocouple in comparison to the heated needle.
The problem is that I am generally unfamiliar with thermocouples. For the task at hand, it would be required that the TC be rigid enough to be repeatedly shoved into and out of raw meat, but small enough as to have minimal heat sync to not throw off temperature readings. Furthermore, the more readings/data points we can collect for a 2 inch x 2 inch piece of tissue, the better. I am also curious as to any suggestions as to the software/interface used to take time sensitive readings from the thermocouples.
Dear Mitchell,
you will find the best thermocouples at OMEGA. We are specialized in thermal stimulation (www.qst-lab.eu), if you need advice, do not hesitate.
Best regards,
Andre
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