Simulation study of the thermal and the thermoelastic effects induced by pulsed laser absorption in human skin

Abstract

We studied the thermal and the mechanical effects induced by pulsed laser absorption in human skin by numerically solving the heat-transfer and the thermoelastic wave equations. The simulation of the heat-transfer equation yielded the spatiotemporal distribution of the temperature increase in the skin, which was then used in the driving term of the thermoelastic wave equation. We compared our simulation results for the temperature increase and the skin displacements with the measured and numerical results, respectively. For the comparison, we used a recent report by Jun et al. [Sci. Rep. 5, 11016 (2015)], who measured in vivo skin temperature and performed numerical simulation of the thermoelastic wave equation using a simple assumption about the temporal evolution of the temperature distribution, and found their results to be in good agreement with our results. In addition, we obtained solutions for the stresses in the human skin and analyzed their dynamic behaviors in detail.