A study of heat distribution in human skin: use of Infrared Thermography

Abstract

Abstract.One of the long-term objectives of this study is to be able to act quickly on body burns, to avoid propagating lesions due to heat diffusion. An experimental and numerical study is presented to better understand the thermomechanical behavior of the skin and its direct environment when exposed to strong thermal variations. The experimental step, suggested in this article, consists in placing a cooled cylindrical steel bar on the skin of a human forearm and measuring the temperature change using an infra-red camera. Blood circulation in the veins was seen to clearly influence of the heat diffusion. These experimental measurements provide a numerical model of the skin and its direct vicinity. This two-dimensional multi-layer model uses the Pennes equation to model biological tissue and the equation of heat in a fluid, to model blood. The properties of materials from the literature are validated by experimentation. The numerical model is able to simulate the experimental observations, but also to estimate blood speed in the veins.

Non-ablative Fractional Thulium Laser Irradiation Suppresses Early Tumor Growth

“…All thermal properties of the skin and blood used in the simulation are based on previous papers [15][16][17][18][19] and are listed in Table 1.…”

A Non-invasive Method for Measuring Blood Flow Rate in Superficial Veins from a Single Thermal Image

“…The tissues surrounding blood veins can be modeled as solid [Ratovoson10]. Thus assuming a superficial blood vein to be a very thin cylindrical shell surrounded by these solid tissues, and assuming blood to be a Newtonian [Santos08] in our experiments will be estimated using thermal imaging which is briefly discussed the next section.…”

“…This is clear through thermal imaging as the temperature of the skin in an abnormal region appears higher than that in a normal region as illustrated by Bagavathiappan et al[Bagavathiappan09]. Other related works are presented in[Ratovoson10,Boué07,and Ratovoson11]. In[Ratovoson10], Ratovoson et al used thermal imaging to study the effect of strong thermal variations on Thermomechanical behavior of the skin which can be applied for body burns.…”

“…Other related works are presented in[Ratovoson10,Boué07,and Ratovoson11]. In[Ratovoson10], Ratovoson et al used thermal imaging to study the effect of strong thermal variations on Thermomechanical behavior of the skin which can be applied for body burns. They extended their work in[Ratovoson11] by presenting a numerical model to simulate the average blood velocity in veins under thermal stress in which metabolism and blood perfusion effects are negligible.…”

A non-invasive method for measuring blood flow rate in superficial veins from a single thermal image.

“…The tissues surrounding blood veins can be modeled as solid [Ratovoson10]. Thus assuming a superficial blood vein to be a very thin cylindrical shell surrounded by these solid tissues, and assuming blood to be a Newtonian [Santos08] Another part of our experiments is to image the superficial veins in the forearm of a living human subject and see the effect of lowering the blood flow rate on the difference in the temperatures of the blood entering and exiting a superficial vein.…”