Acoustic thermometric reconstruction of a time-varying temperature profile

Abstract

The time-varying temperature profiles were reconstructed in an experiment using a thermal acoustic radiation receiving array containing 14 sensors. The temperature was recovered by performing similar experiments using plasticine, as well as in vivo with a human hand. Plasticine preliminarily heated up to 36.5°C and a human hand were placed into water for 50 s at a temperature of 20°C. The core temperature of the plasticine was independently measured using thermocouples. The spatial resolution of the reconstruction in the lateral direction was determined by the distance between neighboring sensors and was equal to10 mm; the averaging time was 10 s. The error in reconstructing the core temperature determined in the experiment with plasticine was 0.5 K. The core temperature of the hand changed with time (in 50 s it decreased from 35 to 34°C) and space (the mean square deviation was 1.5 K). The experiment with the hand revealed that multichannel detection of thermal acoustic radiation using a compact 45 × 36 mm array to reconstruct the temperature profile could be performed during medical procedures.