Simultaneous Estimation of Thermal Properties of Living Tissue Using Noninvasive Method

Abstract

A new noninvasive measurement method is presented for simultaneous estimation of the key thermal properties of cylindrical living tissue. This method is based on heating of the surface of a cylinder and measuring surface temperatures at three points on the cylinder. Numerical calculations and theoretical analysis for the corresponding two-dimensional model are carried out. The results have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed method. The selection, crossover, and mutation operators of a new real-coded genetic algorithm (GA) are designed in this paper to solve the problem of parameter optimization. Then, a set of simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method as well as to optimize the design of the experiments. Finally, a series of experiments is performed to measure the thermal parameters of the human forearm. The experimental results indicate that the obtained parameters, such as the thermal conductivity, blood perfusion, and volumetric heat capacity, are within the range of reference values. The proposed method is easy to implement in practical applications.