Effective Thermal Penetration Depth in Photo-Irradiated Ex Vivo Human Tissues

Abstract

In this work, a model of bioheat distribution is discussed for ex vivo human tissue samples, and the thermal penetration depth measurements performed on several tissues are presented. Optical radiation is widely applied in the treatment and diagnosis of different pathologies. A power density of incident light at 100 mW/cm(2) is sufficiently high enough to induce a temperature increase of >5°C in irradiated human tissue. In this case, knowledge of the thermal properties of the tissue is needed to achieve a better understanding of the therapeutic effects. The application of the diffusion approximation of the radiative transfer equation for the distribution of optical radiation, the experimental setup, and the results thereof are presented and discussed. The effective thermal penetration depth in the studied tissues has been determined to be in the range of 4.3-7.0 mm. The effective thermal penetration depth has been defined, and this could be useful for developing models to describe the thermal effects with a separate analysis of the tissue itself and the blood that irrigates it.