Critical Conditions for the Thermal Diagnosis of the Breast Cancer

Based on the geometrical characteristics of the female breast tissue, a bioheat transfer model is setup to study the surface temperature expression of the breast with a malignant tumor. Resort to the finite element analysis, effects of geometrical parameters of the tumor (the location and the size) and thermal diagnosis conditions (the environmental temperature and the convective heat transfer coefficient) on the surface temperature expression are investigated. Numerical results show that it is difficult to identify the tumor through surface temperature expression, if the tumor is more than 3 cm below the surface. The effect of the environmental temperature on the surface temperature expression is significant, but that of the surface convective heat transfer is not significant.