Analysis of Bio-heat Transfer Problem Using Finite Element Approach

Bio-heat transfer is the study of external or internal heat transfer in the biological body. In different therapeutic treatments especially in cancer treatment, heat is used to cure infected cells. The required temperature that will kill the infected cell should be known before starting the thermal treatment on human tissue. The useful ways to measure the temperature distribution on human tissue are finite difference method as well as analytical method in some cases. There are few reports of finite element solution of bio-heat equation in the literature. Though finite element approach is one of the efficient techniques to find the temperature distribution in physical body, there have been very few reports of using this method for this particular issue. In this paper a finite element model has been developed to analyze the bio-heat transfer equation which is also well known as Pennes equation. Crank-Nicolson method has been used for the time discretization of the unsteady part of the problem. The developed system can be used to predict the temperature in human tissue under certain external heating conditions.