Dimensionless solutions and general characteristics of bioheat transfer during thermal therapy

TL;DR

This paper derives dimensionless solutions for bioheat transfer during thermal therapy, focusing on steady-state thermal penetration depth and time to steady state, providing a universal framework for various thermal treatments.

Contribution

It introduces a dimensionless approach to characterize bioheat transfer, deriving key parameters from solutions of Pennes' equation for medical thermal therapies.

Findings

Dimensionless thermal penetration depth and time to steady state derived.

Results applicable to various thermal therapy scenarios.

Provides a universal framework for bioheat transfer analysis.

Abstract

The derivation and application of the general characteristics of bioheat transfer for medical applications are shown in this paper. Two general bioheat transfer characteristics are derived from solutions of one-dimensional Pennes' bioheat transfer equation; steady-state thermal penetration depth, which is the deepest depth where the heat effect reaches; and time to reach steady state, which represents the amount of time necessary for temperature distribution to converge to a steady-state. All results are described by dimensionless form; therefore these results provide information on temperature distribution in biological tissue for various thermal therapies by transforming to dimension form.