Thermal Modeling of Head and Neck

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed project is to initiate a fundamental heat transfer study of the head and neck system to predict the brain temperature. The research will involve the collaborative efforts of an engineering research at Rice University and a medical researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. There is considerable data at present to justify the need to know the brain temperature in infants who have suffered hypoxia-ischemia, or are at great risk for hypoxia-ischemia. Similar considerations extend to other patient age groups including children and adults with head trauma, surgical correction of congenital heart disease, and adults with stroke. A thermal model for head and neck will be initiated by incorporating the relation between metabolic heat generation and temperature, the effect of physiological parameters and regulatory mechanisms on the cerebral blood flow and the countercurrent heat transfer in the neck's vessels. As a component of Dr. A. Laptook's ongoing investigations on newborn miniature swine brain at UTSMC, additional measurements will be made available to Dr. Y. Bayazitoglu at Rice to include them in her head and neck thermal modeling, to determine how brain temperature is affected by acute alterations in arterial oxygen tension, arterial carbon dioxide tension, brain metabolic rate, and brain ischemia.The initiated research will provide foundation of important future contributions in understanding the pathogenesis of brain injury, and in monitoring of brain temperature during therapeutic interventions. In addition, the created mathematical models will eventually be used as teaching tools to search for optimal treatment by incorporating temperature as another variable.