Study of hot stress dynamic IR thermography for detecting surface cancerous tissue

Abstract

The early diagnosis of cancer at any location of the human body can help in enhancing the survival rate and in reducing the cost of the treatment. Among the several techniques, the conventional infra-red (IR) thermography suffers from several limitations, including higher patient discomfort and longer time for tumour detection based on the temperature difference between tumour and adjacent healthy tissues. Hence, in this work, a novel non-invasive hot stress dynamic IR thermography system is proposed to detect surface tumour without severe discomfort to the patient. The system is designed to detect the surface tumour under 3 min within a temperature range of 42 and 37 °C. A two-dimensional numerical model based on the bio-heat transfer of tissue consists of cancerous and healthy cells is developed and validated to analysis the thermal contrast arises due to the presence of cancerous and healthy cells while cooling naturally. A light source is introduced with appropriate intensity to achieve a suitable temperature contrast. Moreover, the effects of natural convective heat loss from the tissue to the ambient and the scanning speed of IR Thermography on the tissue are investigated. A temperature difference of about 1.5 °C is found after cooling of tissues for 140 s, which can be detected using a thermographic camera. Finally, a sensitivity study is conducted to access the importance of the individual parameter over the final temperature field. The results predict the blood perfusion rate as the most significant parameter that significantly influences the temperature distribution in the considered domain.

Keywords:

• Hot stress
• thermography
• infra-red
• dynamic
• cancer
• scanning speed

Author contributions

Dr. Uddip Kashyap and Dr. Sandip K. Saha of IIT Bombay, Mumbai, have developed the numerical model, as well as, the overall specifications of the hot stress dynamic IR thermography for detecting surficial cancerous tissues. Dr. Subhasish Sarkar, College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital, Kolkata, has provided the basic concept on IR thermography and valuable input in understanding biological aspects of tissue and tumour behaviour.

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.