Non-invasive estimation of the metabolic heat production of breast tumors using digital infrared imaging

In this work the metabolic heat generated by breast tumors was estimated indirectly and noninvasively from digital infrared images and numerically simulating a simplified breast model and a cancerous tumor, this parameter can be of clinical importance since it has been related to the doubling volume's time and malignancy for that particular tumor. The results indicate that digital infrared imaging has the potential to estimate in a non-invasive way the malignancy of a tumor by calculating its metabolic heat generation from bioheat thermal transfer models.