Experimental Research And Numerical Simulation Of 3D Temperature Field Of Human Tongue Based On The Tongue Inspection In Traditional Chinese Medicine

Research deeply in the basis problem of the interdisciplinary field can cause fast development of borderline subject. In this dissertation the mechanism of tongue inspection in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is explored from the point of view of thermal science.Based on simulation the 3D temperature field method in real vessel shape and real heated state, the superficial state and sixty-four-dollar question about bio-heat transfer has been studied, including the relationship of tongue manifestation and the variation rule of the tongue temperature field. By acquiring the information about organism by many mediums and analyzing synthetically, whether or not the information of tongue can reflect TCM syndrome was discussed. The vascularity and heat transfer of vessel tree has marked influence on the temperature field. Simulation the 3D temperature field of organisms is a new mathematic method as the conjugated transfer of heat is taken into account and the model of real tongue is constructed on the basis of vessel cast. However the vessel cast of human organ can not obtain easily, so this simulation method is limited which based on the vessel cast.The emphases of this paper include: i) the stepwise method was proposed which was fitted for the generation the lingual arterial trees of human, and a 3D arterial trees model of human tongue was constructed. ii) The influence of the furcated configuration on the heat transfer of blood was analysed, and the Nusselt number function was obtained by fitting. iii) A mathematic model of lingual temperature field of human was proposed in which the arterial tree of human tongue formed by the stepwise method was set as physical model and the Nusselt number function was used. The 3D temperature field of human tongue was obtained by this model. iv) The temperature distribution of the surface of tongue of different people was measured by infrared thermal imager, including healthy people, people with blood stasis syndrome and people with blood deficiency syndrome. And these infrared thermal images were compared with the 3D temperature field of human tongue obtained by numerical simulation in order to quest for the pertinence between the mechanism of tongue inspection in TCM and bio-heat transfer.Research results indicate that: i) the 3D arterial tree of human tongue formed by the stepwise method was in accord with the real configuration of lingual arterial trees of human. The arterial model of blood deficiency human tongue and blood stasis human tongue could be constructed by modifying the bifurcation exponent of vessel trees. ii) The distribution of velocity, temperature and the Nusselt number of blood in the furcated configuration was different with that in a straight tube. And the bifurcation ratio, the furcated angel, the radius and velocity of branching vessel had a marked influence on the distribution of velocity, temperature and the Nusselt number. iii) The export heat by vaporizing was the primary export heat. iv) By using the mathematic model of lingual temperature field of human propsed by this paper, the lingual temperature field of healthy people, blood stasis syndrome people and blood deficiency syndrome people were obtained. The rule of temperature distribution of the tongue surface gained by simulation was same with that of infrared thermal images. v) The mainly reason why the lingual temperature field of different TCM syndromes has different rules was the change of the position of root segment entrance, metabolic heat of tongue tissue, and the reference humidity of tongue surface.The innovations of this paper lie in the following. i) The stepwise method was proposed which was fitted for the generation the lingual arterial trees of human. This method can substitute the vessel cast experiment. ii) The Nusselt number function of the blood in the furcated configuration was obtained by fitting. iii) Using the arterial tree of human tongue formed by the stepwise method as physical model, the lingual temperature field of healthy people, blood stasis syndrome people and blood deficiency syndrome people were simulated. And these results were compared with the infrared thermal images in order to research the pertinence between the mechanism of tongue inspection in TCM and bio-heat transfer.