Sensitivity analysis of temperature field and parameter identification in burned and healthy skin tissue

In the chapter, problems connected with the numerical modeling of bioheat transfer processes are presented. In particular the non-homogeneous system of a burn wound and healthy tissue is considered. The heat exchange between sub-domains and environment is described by a system of partial differential equations (the Pennes equations) supplemented by adequate boundary conditions. The first goal of the research is the estimation of the changes of temperature fields due to perturbations in thermal parameters using the direct method of sensitivity analysis. Both the basic problem and additional ones concerning the sensitivity with respect to selected parameters are solved using the boundary element method. The second goal is the problem of burn wound shape identification. The additional information necessary to solve such a task results from the knowledge of temperature distribution on the external surface of skin tissue. At the stage of solving the inverse problem, a gradient method has been used. In the final part of the chapter the results of computations are shown.