Project Overview

Problem Statement: Mohs surgery is a technique used to treat skin cancers which requires the tumor to be removed, rapidly frozen, sectioned, and stained so that margins can be evaluated while the patient remains in the clinic. If margins are positive, additional tissue is immediately removed from the cancerous area. After several consecutive uses, the freezing platform loses efficiency, causing the patient to be under local anesthesia for a longer period of time than desired. This project will design a conductive platform which would extract the heat from the tissue rapidly, allowing for faster tissue freezing and speed up the surgical treatment of patients.

Function: The Cryostat Freezing Platform should be able to fit and stay inside the cryostat while being large enough to hold the tissue samples. It should be able to maintain a constant -20 degrees celsius and help to speed up the freezing of the tissue and, in turn, the surgical process in general.

Contact Information

Team Members

• Phillip Michaelson - Team Leader
• Taylor Karns - Communicator
• Jahnavi Puranik - BSAC
• Haleigh Simon - BWIG
• Sara Martin - BPAG

Advisor and Client

• Dr. Jeremy Rogers - Advisor
• Dr. Andrew Swanson - Client