Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS OF HUMAN BREAST THERMAL RESPONSE AS AN AID FOR EARLY CANCER DIAGNOSIS
Submission Author:
Ana Clara Saccol , PR , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Ana Clara Saccol, Carlos Dalmaso Neto, Estela Carraro, JOSÉ VIRIATO COELHO VARGAS, Wellington Balmant, André Bellin Mariano, Lauber Martins
Presenter: JOSÉ VIRIATO COELHO VARGAS
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0631
Abstract
Cancer is among the pathologies that most kill women in Brazil and worldwide, with the majority of deaths being due to breast cancer. The disease's lethality is associated with its stage, which refers to the degree of involvement of the disease in the individual. Early diagnosis is, therefore, essential to significantly increase the chances of cure and to enable an adequate treatment for the patient. One way to assess the existence and the precise location of tumors in the breast using a non-invasive and non-radioactive method, is by detecting metabolic alterations through thermography. However, temperature measurement can be influenced by multiple factors, such as humidity, radiation, temperature of the collection room and also factors associated to the patient (age, heart rate, size and breast shape). The objective of this paper is the standardization and improvement of a methodology for analysis of the thermal response and diagnosis of breast cancer utilizing different infrared images. For that, each one of the infrared images is transformed into a 3D model of the breast of study. The model is smoothed and discretized using a uniform cubic mash. The discretization by the method of volume element model (VEM) divides the domain to be studied into control volumes. Each mash element corresponds to a breast volume and can be represented by a system of equations, indicating the heat exchange by each unity and considering, also, the blood flow. That way, it is possible to simulate the internal temperature distribution of the breast in order to locate precisely the tumor, as expected. The use of different infrared images, from different patients with individual physical characteristics and under different environmental conditions, enables us to compare the results in each case and normalize the method to obtain a standard in the thermographic analysis, thereby making it faster and more appropriate. The herein study presents a simplified mathematical model to predict the human breast thermal response and a parametric analysis considering the aggressiveness, location and the amount of breast cancers tumors in a patient. In preliminary conclusions, it is clear the significant contribution of thermography to early diagnosis of breast cancer. As technology advances, this harmless method is becoming more accurate, and having a normalized methodology results in the possibility of diagnosis in any patient in any environment.
Keywords
breast cancer, Thermography, three-dimensional modeling
