Analytical and Experimental Solution for Heat Source Located Under Skin: Modeling Chest Tumor Detection in Male Subjects by Infrared Thermography

Body temperature being one of the vital signs of a healthy person, could be used to diagnose many physiological abnormalities. Since tumors are highly vascular and have a high perfusion and metabolism rate, temperature is higher at the site of the tumor. By analyzing the thermo-grams obtained from IR camera, it is possible to assess the tumor parameters such as depth and radius. The present study has revised and analyzed the aforementioned parameters by developing an analytical solution for inverse heat conduction problem. Furthermore, laboratory experiment was conducted using Nobel Agar solution as tissue phantom to validate the proposed analytical methodology. It was found that keeping the heat source at the voltage of 6 V, it is possible to detect actual depth that the tumor is located by using IR camera.