A porous media model of human hand to study the relationship between endothelial function and fingertip temperature oscillation

Abstract

In this study we adopt the porous media model to simulate heat transfer of hand, in which blood perfusion in tissues through micro vessels is considered as fluid infiltration in porous solid body. Temperature response of fingers to a cooling test is simulated by considering parameter variations of ambient temperature, heat convection and tissue porosity. The results show a faster temperature recovering in fingertips than that in other parts, which is demonstrated in some experiments. Furthermore, a contra-lateral cooling test is simulated to discuss the changing of temperature fluctuation amplitude. By giving a periodical porosity variation of fingers in endothelial frequency, we get the result which shows a favorable agreement with the experiment, implying that the periodic change of porosity can be modeled as the period change of micro vessels. We hope that the proposed porous media model can be extended to apply in the non-invasive blood glucose detection via hand temperature oscillation.