Chanmugam Arjun, Bhargava Akanksha, Herman Cila
Department of Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.
Int Mech Eng Congress Expo. 2012 Nov;2012:717-723. doi: 10.1115/IMECE2012-88405.
Deep tissue injuries (DTI) are serious lesions which may develop in deep tissue layers as a result of sustained tissue loading or ischemic injury. These lesions may not become visible on the skin surface until the injury reaches an advanced stage making their early detection a challenging task. Early diagnosis leading to early treatment mitigates the progression of lesion and remains one of the priorities in management. The aim of this study is to examine skin surface temperature distributions of damaged tissue and develop criteria for the detection of incipient DTI. A multilayer quantitative heat transfer model of the skin tissue was developed using finite element based software COMSOL Multiphysics. Thermal response of the skin surface was computed during deep tissue inflammation and deep tissue ischemia and then compared with that of healthy tissue. In the presence of a DTI, an increase of about 0.5°C in skin surface temperatures was noticed during initial phase of deep tissue inflammation, which was followed by a surface temperature decrease of about 0.2°C corresponding to persistent deep tissue ischemia. These temperature differences are large enough to be detected by thermographic imaging. This study, therefore, also enhances the understanding of the previously detected thermographic quantitative changes associated with DTI.
深部组织损伤（DTI）是一种严重的损伤，可能由于持续的组织负荷或缺血性损伤而在深部组织层中发生。这些损伤在损伤发展到晚期之前可能不会在皮肤表面显现出来，因此早期检测是一项具有挑战性的任务。早期诊断并及时治疗可减轻损伤的进展，这仍然是管理中的首要任务之一。本研究的目的是检查受损组织的皮肤表面温度分布，并制定早期深部组织损伤的检测标准。使用基于有限元的软件COMSOL Multiphysics建立了皮肤组织的多层定量传热模型。计算了深部组织炎症和深部组织缺血期间皮肤表面的热响应，然后与健康组织的热响应进行比较。在存在深部组织损伤的情况下，在深部组织炎症的初始阶段，皮肤表面温度升高约0.5°C，随后对应于持续的深部组织缺血，表面温度下降约0.2°C。这些温度差异足够大，可以通过热成像检测到。因此，本研究还加深了对先前检测到的与深部组织损伤相关的热成像定量变化的理解。
