ABSTRACT
Models of microvascular heat transfer are useful for optimizing thermal therapies such as hyperthermia treatment, for modeling thermoregulatory response at the tissue level, for assessing environmental hazards that involve tissue heating, for using thermal means of diagnosing vascular pathologies and for relating blood flow to heat clearance in thermal methods of blood perfusion measurement. For example, the effect of local hyperthermia treatment is determined by the length of time that the tissue is held at an elevated temperature, nominally 43◦C or higher. Since the tissue temperature depends on the balance between the heat added by artificial means and the tissue’s ability to clear that heat, an understanding of the means by which the blood transports heat is essential. This section of the handbook outlines the general problems associated with such processes while more extensive reviews and tutorials on microvascular heat transfer may be found elsewhere [1-4].
