The Study Of Breast Disease Evaluation By Infrared Thermal Imaging And Its Numerical Simulations

Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer among women in the world. In this thesis, a 3D thermal model of breast was presented based on the heat transfer of breast and its anatomical structure, physiological characteristics. Finite element method was used to attain the temperature distribution of breast and then the effects of various factors, such as metabolic heat generation, blood perfusion, and size, depth, position of tumor, on temperature distribution of breast were especially discussed. Furthermore, the effect of environmental condition on surface thermal signature expression of tumor was also discussed. The simulated results showed that: (1) the temperature profiles of breast could be significantly affected by the metabolic heat generation, blood perfusion, tumor size, depth and position; (2) the surface thermal expression of breast tumor could be significantly influenced by surface air flow and environmental temperature. An effective scheme was further presented to improve the skin thermal expression of breast tumor and had been shown good results.The thermal images of 74 normal female subjects were taken by infrared thermal imaging and then a preliminary criterion of breast disease was established based on the temperature distribution characteristics of breast thermograms. In an attempt to validate the reliability of the criterion, 12 females were investigated based on this criterion. The results showed that for normal females, the whole mean temperature of the left breast is slightly higher than that of the right breast. Finally, the breast thermograms were compared with numerical and ultrasound diagnosis results, respectively. The results showed that: (1) numerical simulations can provide a powerful adjuvant tool for breast thermograms interpretation; (2) the diagnosis results by infrared imaging were in good accordance with that by ultrasound.