Effect of tissue density on the temperature pattern of the breast

Abstract

Mammography, which is the most common screening technique for breast cancer, is known to be less sensitive for women with dense breast tissue. Breast thermography, which records an image from the temperature pattern at the surface of the skin has been used as an adjunct to detect breast pathologies. The working principle of breast thermography relies on the increase in vascularity and metabolic heat generation of breast tumors compared to healthy tissue, which generates an increase in temperature that can be detected by current infrared imaging equipment. In this work the effect of breast density on the temperature pattern of the breast is investigated through finite element simulations. A three-dimensional scan of a real patient was imported into COMSOL Multiphysics along with structures resembling breast lobes, by changing the volume ratio of breast lobes and the whole breast an approximation of different breast densities was simulated. The thermal parameters of the different breast tissues were obtained from the literature and finite element simulations of heat transfer in biological tissue was performed using COMSOL Multiphysics. Results show that the breast density does not impact significantly the temperature pattern of the breast, therefore it can be concluded that thermography does not dependent on breast density.