<title>Specific heat capacities of human and animal tissues</title>

Abstract

Successful laserinduced tumor therapy requires the knowledge of optical properties of tissue as well as of the thermal ones (specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity). Therefore, a comprehensive review of one of those values, the specific heat capacity c<SUB>p</SUB>, of different human and animal tissues is given measured calorimetrically by us or collected from the literature. A Differential Scanning Calorimeter was used to determine the in vitro specific heat capacities of various healthy and tumorous human tissues. The influence of freezing in liquid nitrogen and of thermal coagulation on the specific heat capacity was investigated.