Quantifying thermal-signature equivalence in infrared breast thermography using a modified Pennes bioheat model
Abstract
Infrared breast thermography measures skin-surface temperature, but heat diffusion and thermal screening can obscure intratumoral physiology. We introduce a tolerance-aware, full-profile framework to determine when distinct intratumoral perfusion patterns become observationally equivalent at the breast surface. We solve a steady-state modified Pennes model for a two-dimensional multilayer breast containing a finite tumor with uniform, rim-enhanced, necrotic-core, or anisotropic perfusion. A conservative finite-difference scheme with a BiCGSTAB solver and an incomplete-LU (IncompleteLUT) preconditioner is verified by mesh refinement and an analytical benchmark. For a representative configuration, equivalent-pair fractions are 2/6, 5/6, and 6/6 at tolerances of $0.020$, $0.050$, and 0.100 ∘C, respectively. Noise tests show that classification depends on how profile-level uncertainty is modeled. Matching tumor-averaged perfusion reduces rim-enhanced--uniform and necrotic-core--uniform profile distances by 97.7% and 99.0%, respectively, whereas anisotropic perfusion remains more distinguishable. Greater tumor depth increases thermal-signature equivalence, while larger diameter enhances distinguishability. Among four parameter groups, heat generation has the strongest positive influence on mean profile separation. For fixed representative geometry and perfusion-pattern shapes, a 300-point Latin-hypercube analysis with independent uniform ±20% perturbations of these parameter groups finds that about 79% of sampled configurations retain at least one equivalent pair at εT=0.020 ∘C. Our results show that a detectable static surface anomaly does not uniquely determine its internal perfusion structure.
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BibTeX
@misc{muslim2026quantifying,
title = {{Quantifying thermal-signature equivalence in infrared breast thermography using a modified Pennes bioheat model}},
author = {Roni Muslim and Ramacos Fardela and Tista Artu Indra Kusuma},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.05713},
eprint = {2605.05713},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05713},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Quantifying thermal-signature equivalence in infrared breast thermography using a modified Pennes bioheat model
AU - Roni Muslim
AU - Ramacos Fardela
AU - Tista Artu Indra Kusuma
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/25
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.05713
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05713
AB - Infrared breast thermography measures skin-surface temperature, but heat diffusion and thermal screening can obscure intratumoral physiology. We introduce a tolerance-aware, full-profile framework to determine when distinct intratumoral perfusion patterns become observationally equivalent at the breast surface. We solve a steady-state modified Pennes model for a two-dimensional multilayer breast containing a finite tumor with uniform, rim-enhanced, necrotic-core, or anisotropic perfusion. A conservative finite-difference scheme with a BiCGSTAB solver and an incomplete-LU (IncompleteLUT) preconditioner is verified by mesh refinement and an analytical benchmark. For a representative configuration, equivalent-pair fractions are 2/6, 5/6, and 6/6 at tolerances of $0.020$, $0.050$, and 0.100 ^∘C, respectively. Noise tests show that classification depends on how profile-level uncertainty is modeled. Matching tumor-averaged perfusion reduces rim-enhanced--uniform and necrotic-core--uniform profile distances by 97.7% and 99.0%, respectively, whereas anisotropic perfusion remains more distinguishable. Greater tumor depth increases thermal-signature equivalence, while larger diameter enhances distinguishability. Among four parameter groups, heat generation has the strongest positive influence on mean profile separation. For fixed representative geometry and perfusion-pattern shapes, a 300-point Latin-hypercube analysis with independent uniform ±20% perturbations of these parameter groups finds that about 79% of sampled configurations retain at least one equivalent pair at ε_T=0.020 ^∘C. Our results show that a detectable static surface anomaly does not uniquely determine its internal perfusion structure.
ER -