Theoretical analysis on thermal treatment of skin with repetitive pulses

Jingxuan Ma,Yuxin Sun,Xianfeng Yang,Jialing Yang

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89395-x

Abstract

Thermal ablation is an efficient method of medical treatment, such as cancer therapy, wound closure, laser cutting, freckle removal and other treatments. In order to guarantee the curative effect and the safety of the patients, the thermal response of the tissue which is subjected to the heat source need to be carefully monitored. However, it is too difficult to achieve real-time monitoring on the full-field temperature. In the present study, efforts were made to build up a theoretical model for the prediction of the thermal response in the human skin. The Dual-Phase-Lag (DPL) bio-heat transfer model and the Henrique’s burn assessment model were employed to describe the interaction of multi-pulse heat source and the skin. The repeated multi-pulse laser is a common heat source in the thermal treatment and the thermal responses of the skin would be complicated under the common effects of the non-Fourier effects and the multi-pulse source. The Green’s function approach was used to solve the governing equations analytically. The closed-form solution for the temperature distribution of the skin was obtained and the thermal damage was estimated based on the temperature results. The influences of the biological parameters (the phase lags of the heat flux and the temperature gradient) and the heat source parameters (the pulse number and the duty ratio) on the temperature distribution, the burn degree and the irreversible burn depth of the irradiated region were discussed.

Highlights

Thermal ablation is an efficient method of medical treatment, such as cancer therapy, wound closure, laser cutting, freckle removal and other treatments
Laplace transform method was employed to obtain the semi-analytical solution for the governing equations. Fu6 explored the thermal response inside the skin in the process of thermal treatment on the basis of Pennes model
The influences of the non-Fourier effects induced by the phase lags of the heat flux and the temperature gradient on the thermal behavior were considered. Afrin[18] explored the non-equilibrium heat transfer in living biological tissues by considering the arterial and venous bloods

Summary

Introduction

Thermal ablation is an efficient method of medical treatment, such as cancer therapy, wound closure, laser cutting, freckle removal and other treatments. Ma33 has solved some heat transfer problems by using Green’s function method, such as the three-dimensional living biological tissue subjected to a scanning laser beam, the DPL heat conduction in a finite medium subjected to a moving feat source, and the bi-layered circular plate irradiated by laser pulse.

Results

Conclusion