Thermal distribution analysis in multi-layers homogeneous phantom using Infrared Imaging Technique: A preliminary study

Detecting breast cancer at its early stage has become one of the challenges in medical imaging field. Infrared Imaging Technique has been proven to be able to detect the presence of these cancer cells prior to lump development. However, very few studies have been carried out to further interpret the thermal distribution pattern in quantitative impression. Hence, the objective of this work is to perform a comparative analysis of the thermal distribution pattern in homogenous tissue mimicking phantom using finite element analysis model simulation, experimental works and image processing. Results obtained show that thermal distribution patterns for both simulation and experimental have a strong average correlation coefficient of 0.94±0.056 with a significant degradation in the surface temperature which was due to the convective boundary condition. It is also shown that the algorithm developed for hotspot area detection can be potentially improved for more complicated thermal distribution pattern on a heterogeneous medium in future.