Comparative Study of Finite Element Method and Boundary Element Method for Reconstruction of 3D Temperature Field in a Biological Body

The noninvasive reconstruction of 3D temperature field in a biological body is very valuable in bio-medical engineering field. Based on the classical Pennes bioheat transfer equation, the mathematical model of heat transfer suitable for breast tissue is established in this paper. Meanwhile, the modeling and simulation of heat transfer in a cuboid polypropylene module are presented based on finite element method (FEM) and boundary element method (BEM) respectively. The thermal properties of polypropylene are very similar with that of female breast tissue. The simulation results are analyzed by comparison. The analysis results show the contours of temperature field acquired with FEM are smooth, the distribution of temperature values is reasonable, and the results can reflect the position and temperature of heat sources to some extent, but the computation burden of FEM is heavy; The contours of temperature field acquired with BEM are not smooth, and temperature field appears fluctuant locally, the results can also reflect the position and temperature of sources to some extent, but the calculation amount of BEM is much smaller than that of FEM. For the biological tissue with complex boundary condition and geometry, the FEM is suitable for the simulation and analysis of temperature field, while for the relatively simple one, the BEM is better.