Hand Skin Temperature after Local Cold Test: Thermal Imaging Observation and Mathematical Computation

A thermographic study of the body's reaction to a cold test (immersion of the arm's hand in cold water for 1 min) of 48 volunteers was carried out. The process of recovering the temperature of the cooled hand had an oscillatory character. Fluctuations in temperature values also took place in an uncooled hand, which indicates a systemic response of the body to a cold test. A general approach to the design of biotechnical systems is used, based on the representation of a biological object as a “black box”, the behavior of which is described by a mathematical model. A computational model based on the V. N. Strakhov's method of linear integral representations with an addition in the form of an improved method of block contrast is constructed. The calculation results agree with both the experimental data obtained in this work and the literature. Possible physiological mechanisms described in the literature and explaining the measured and calculated oscillatory phenomena are presented.