title: Modeling electrical power absorption and thermally-induced biological tissue damage.
abstract: This work develops a model for thermally induced damage from high current flow through biological tissue. Using the first law of thermodynamics, the balance of energy produced by the current and the energy absorbed by the tissue are investigated. The tissue damage is correlated with an evolution law that is activated upon exceeding a temperature threshold. As an example, the Fung material model is used. For certain parameter choices, the Fung material law has the ability to absorb relatively significant amounts of energy, due to its inherent exponential response character, thus, to some extent, mitigating possible tissue damage. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the model's behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1740, USA, zohdi@me.berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: T I
authors.initials: TI
authors.lastname: Zohdi
mesh_terms: D000042:Absorption; D004560:Electricity; D013696:Temperature; D013816:Thermodynamics