Cryosurgery and cryopreservation of human tissues are research areas with important ramifications for the field of modern medicine. Successful destruction of target tissue and successful preservation of tissue at low temperatures requires sophisticated freezing and thawing protocols. The first step in the development of these protocols in a proper understanding of the process of tissue freezing. In freezing tissue, there are three regimes of interest, an unfrozen zone, a frozen zone and a mushy zone consisting of both frozen and unfrozen phases. It is in this mushy zone that the critical interactions occur between the freeze front and the living cells and in which the ultimate survival or distruction of the cell is determined.

This talk will highlight a numerical model which has been developed for analyzing the development and progression of freezing front and illustrate its application to algae and to human tissue.

1996-1997 Mathematics in High Performance Computing