Thermal dosimetry and thermodynamics in test tubes and Petri dishes.

Many in vitro experiments have been conducted during the past 50 years to explore the mechanisms of interaction between RF energy and living tissue. There has been practically no consideration given to the thermodynamic events taking place in the cell medium, which absorbs the bulk of the incident energy and evolves towards a temperature equilibrium condition during the exposure. This paper explores the different medium thermodynamic conditions arising during the exposure of cell preparations, depending on their heat exchange environments. The final goal is to determine if the thermodynamic conditions cause convective motion in the medium with possible biological consequences to the exposed cell preparations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]