A Method for in Vivo Measurement of Thermophysical Properties of Biological Tissues

A non-contract method is proposed to measure thermal conductivity and thermal difffusivity of various kinds of materials, especially biological tissues. The method is based on the fact that the time variation of the heated surface temperature depends mainly on the thermal properties of the material when its surface is heated locally. An argon laser and an infrared thermometer are used heating and surface temperature measurements. The measured temperature variation is compared with that obtained numerically in advance, then the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity are estimated simultaneously. When the laser power and heating radius have been estimated accurately, the present method could obtain the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of non-metal solids within an error of 10%.