Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

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Infrared Physics & Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infrared

A feasible method for measuring the blood flow velocity in superficial artery
based on the laser induced dynamic thermography
Chao Jin a, Zhizhu He b, Shanshan Zhang b, Minchao Qi a, Ziqiao Sun b, Derui Di b, Jing Liu a,b,
a
b

Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China
Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s
" We present laser induced dynamic infrared thermography for estimating blood flow velocity.
" Theoretical modeling and conceptual in vivo experiments on rabbit auricle artery were performed.
" The calibrated results fit well with the Doppler ultrasound measurement.
" Practicality and feasibility of the method was demonstrated.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 21 March 2012
Available online 26 July 2012
Keywords:
Blood flow velocity
Infrared thermography
Laser heating
Physiological measurement
Disease diagnostics

a b s t r a c t
Infrared thermography has been proved to be a useful tool to detect thermal physiologic changes associated with various diseases. However, static and single point temperature mapping on skin surface provided by the infrared thermography has not been able to meet the requirements for evaluating the
complicated physiological status of human body. In order to explore more physiological variables for possible disease diagnostics, the present paper has developed a laser induced dynamic thermographic
modality to estimate the average velocity of the superficial blood flow by means of tracking thermal
transport along blood flow direction. A conceptual in vivo experiment is designed to record dynamic temperature response of rabbit auricle skin by thermograph, which is then used to estimate the blood flow
velocity through a derived theoretical model. In addition, the lumped parameter model is developed to
calibrate the estimated error by compensating the thermal response time induced by the tissue temperature change that the current infrared thermal imaging system with limited thermal sensitivity may fail
to capture. The final calibrated results are fitting well with that from the Doppler ultrasound measurement, which indeed verified the practicality and feasibility of the method developed in this work.
! 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
For decades, temperature has been established as a commonly
used and extremely important physiological indicator of health
in clinics [1]. With the advancement of modern medical technologies, a variety of the temperature measuring methods have been
developed for clinical disease diagnostics, such as mercury thermometer, thermocouple, thermochromic liquid crystal imaging,
infrared thermography and other thermal detection modalities.
Among these, infrared thermography has been more or less used
in clinics to detect changes in skin surface temperature associated
with various diseases, such as the early diagnosis of breast cancer,

Corresponding author at: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of

Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China. Tel.: +86 10 62794896;
fax: +86 10 82543767.
E-mail address: jliubme@tsinghua.edu.cn (J. Liu).
1350-4495/$ - see front matter ! 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infrared.2012.07.007

inflammation detection, diabetic monitoring, rehabilitation assessment, fever screening, and erectile dysfunction evaluation [114].
It is worth mentioning that such method has been favored by clinicians due to its easy to operate, non-invasive, non-contact and
low-cost merits. However, traditional thermal diagnostics through
merely interpreting the single point temperature mapping or thermal distribution information on skin surface provided by the infrared thermography technique has not been able to fully meet the
requirements for evaluating the complicated health status of human body, let alone some major detrimental diseases with complex physiopathological characteristics and mechanisms, such as
CVD (cardiovascular disease). For CVD, the medical measurement
for human physiological parameter concerning the vascular blood
flow, including its velocity, viscosity, volume and pressure, is of
great significance to the clinical disease diagnostics, prevention
and treatment. It is obvious that heat and mass transfer have become a basic characteristic of life activity link closer with the

C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

health status of human body. Thus the exploration of more

physiological variables, such as blood flow, respiratory and perspiratory function, based on the quantitative information contained in
the thermal physiological signal has become a pretty hot topic and
challenge for researchers. As early as in 1975, thermography has
been employed as a method of blood perfusion measurement by
Francis et al. [15]. In recent years, more and more potential thermographic applications for measuring the thermal physiologic
state of blood flow have been carried out [16]. Pavlidis et al. have
attempted to build a thermal physiological model for estimating
the blood flow speed and vessel location from the thermal video
and further experimental work is desired to validate the model
[17]. Boue et al. developed a thermographic method to estimate
the radius, depth and blood flow velocity in a vain of the forearm.
However, there existed certain error between the estimated value
and actual data of blood flow velocity [18]. Besides, the measurements of perfusion, cardiovascular pulse and breathing by infrared
thermography have also been investigated [17].
However, thermography owes its own insurmountable shortcomings. For example, its clinical interpretation may be tedious
and even error-prone if the thermal pattern induced by abnormal
pathological changes is subtle. In order to promote the accuracy
of disease detection and diagnosis, many endeavors are being
made for the enhancement of thermal expression on the skin over
the diseases, such as Active Dynamic Thermography (ADT), cold
stress, forced convection and induced evaporation, and stimulated
heating [1926]. All of the above approaches indeed effectively enhanced the thermal expression and thus improved the sensitivity
of thermography. However, few attentions have been paid to explore quantitative physiologic parameters or information from
the dynamic thermal physiological mechanisms induced by thermo-stimulation. Therefore, more work should be concentrated on
discovering the quantitative physiologic information which could
open the door for understanding and revealing the profound mystery of organism, especially for human being.
Aiming to further widen the medical application of infrared
thermography, this paper is dedicated to propose an alternative
strategy for estimating the blood flow velocity of superficial artery
by tracking the dynamic superficial temperature distribution induced by pulse thermo-stimulation from external laser, which is
recorded by infrared thermography. Compared to the previous
methods, the laser induced modality holds the advantage of
enhancing the thermal effusion effects of blood and tissue rapidly,
precisely and conveniently. The real-time thermal response information associated with the blood flow velocity can be deduced
from the infrared thermographs, such as the blood vessel location,
the temperature changes of blood flow, the heat flux pulse traveling distance, and the transient response time. In addition, the estimation method for superficial blood flow velocity provided by the
theoretical modeling and the in vivo experiment was additionally
performed to verify such strategy. Another unique innovation of
this method lies in that we propose to introduce the lumped
parameter model to calibrate the final average estimated velocity.
Such efforts have not been implemented before.

2. The blood flow velocity estimation modeling

In order to implement a thermal method for estimating blood
flow velocity, the relation between thermal transport along blood
flow direction and blood flow velocity is established through analyzing heat transfer induced by laser heating at living tissue with a
superficial blood vessel. As shown in Fig. 1, for simplification, one
vascular model with typical geometrical configuration has been
constructed as the analyzed spatial domain, in which z denotes
the tissue depth from the skin surface while x and y are along

463

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the biological tissue model with a blood vessel.

the surface. The exposure of laser beam is toward the blood vessel
region.
In this model, the analyzed biological tissue spatial domain
composed of two main parts, the perfused tissue and blood vessel
domains. The well known Pennes bioheat transfer equation is
adopted to characterize the temperature field for the perfused tissue [27]:

Ct

@T t
rkt rT t # xb C b T b & T t Q X; t
@t

where Q(X, t) = Qm + Qr; C is the heat capacity; k is the thermal conductivity; x is blood perfusion from capillary blood; Qm and Qr denote the metabolic heat generation and spatial heat generation,
respectively; X contains the Cartesian coordinates x, y and z; subscript t and b denote tissue and blood.
For the blood vessel domain, the temperature field can be described by:

Cb

!
"
@T b
VrT b rkb rT b #
@t

where V is the blood velocity.

It is intelligible that the convective heat transfer plays the main
role in large blood vessel domains due to the blood flow with relatively high velocity. And the thermal effect caused by the heat
conduction is commonly minor that can be ignored in the large
vascular area. Therefore, with respect to this superficial blood flow
model exposure to the laser heating, the temperature of blood in
large vessel which varies along one dimension y can be governed
by the following equation:

@T b
@T b
V
0
@t
@y

The traveling wave solution to Eq. (3) can be expressed as

Tb = T(&Vt + y). Thus the velocity of a heat flux pulse (induced by
laser heating) can approximate to the average blood flow velocity
V. In other words, V can be estimated by the heat flux pulse
velocity.

dy Dy
(
dt Dt

where, Dy denotes the transfer distance of the same heat flux pulse
during the time interval of Dt. In fact, the heat flux pulse can be expressed by the temperature changes in skin surface which can be
recorded by thermal video. An additional remark must be pointed
out is that the heat transfer between tissue and blood vessel in
Eq. (3) has been ignored, which might produce a certain deviation
when evaluating the temperature distribution in blood vessel. It is
this heat loss that would weaken the amplitude of heat flux pulse
through the axis of vessel, nevertheless the calculation of the heat
flux pulse velocity cannot be affected significantly. In conclusion,
the average flow velocity can be estimated by the infinitesimal time
interval and travel distance of the heat flux pulse which could be
determined by the thermal response of the superficial artery during
the laser heating.

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C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

3. Experiment and preliminary result

3.1. Experiment in vivo
Based on the above theoretical deduction and analysis, in vivo
experiment on the live rabbit ear with apparent superficial artery
has been carried out to estimate the actual average velocity of
the blood flow and then to preliminarily validate the model constructed in the above section. A rabbit (bought from Military Medical School Laboratory Animal Center, Beijing, China) weighting
2.5 kg was selected, and the main auricle arteries of both ears were
employed as the test objects as depicted in Fig. 2a.
In this experiment, an animal operating with a size of
450 ) 600 mm2 and a fixed support were prepared to place the
rabbit while keeping its main auricle artery at the test ear vertical,
respectively. Meanwhile, a diode laser system (KS3-11311-106,
BWT Beijing LTD, China) with a continuous wave of 810 nm wavelength and maximal power of 30 W was adopted to produce the laser beam which was delivered through an optical fiber with a
100 lm diameter and an applicator at the optical fiber tip was
fixed by a flexible cardan joint. The commercially available infrared
camera (FLIR SC620, FLIR Inc, USA) with a high-resolution of
640 ) 480 and thermal sensitivity of 0.065 "C was applied to record the real-time thermal response.
For the consideration of safety issue and thermal effects on the
live rabbit, the laser exposure power of the heating stimulation
was set as 1.2 W, and the recording rate of thermal video was prescribed as 3.75 frames per second, which satisfied the requirements for capturing the transient thermal response of the
superficial artery during the external laser heating.
Before starting the experiment, the rabbit was anesthetized via
intraperitoneal injection of pentobarbital sodium with mass

fraction of 3%. When vital signals became stable, the rabbit was
comfortably put on the operating table and fixed its test ear where
there specified the laser exposure spot at the vascular bifurcation,
meanwhile maintained a distance of 50 mm away from the laser
applicator as depicted in Fig. 2a and b. The focus distance between
rabbit ear and infrared camera was approximately set as 150 cm.
After all the above preparations, we start the diode laser system
and infrared camera to preheat, set and check all the measuring
parameters. And then the experiment was carried out which consisted of three parts, the steady state with duration time of 10 s, laser heating stimulation with exposure time of 30 s and thermal
physiological state recovering period with duration time of 80 s.
At the same time, the infrared camera kept on capturing the transient thermal response. After 5 min, the experimental procedure
would be repeated as described above. Besides the left ear of the
experimental rabbit, its right one was also measured by the same
procedure in this study.
3.2. Results
3.2.1. Thermal image analysis
As shown in Fig. 3, the infrared thermographs represented the
different states of the thermal response on the main auricle artery,
from which we can summarize the following preliminary
phenomenon and findings: (a) indicated the temperature distribution and temperature gradient along the blood flow direction at the
instant t = 0 s; (b) and (c) taken at t = 20 s and t = 40 s, showed that
when laser heating stimulation lasted for 10 s, the temperature of
the vascular region increased and the temperature gradient
obviously remained along the blood flow direction. At t = 40 s,
the transient temperature increased to the maximum at the laser
exposure spot, while other spots along the blood flow direction

Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the experimental setup. (a) Denotes the experimental rabbit ear. (b) Indicates the distance of 50 mm between rabbit and the laser. (c) Denotes
the experimental devices, including the laser applicator and infrared camera.

Fig. 3. The thermal images of the rabbit ear during the laser heating and recovering process. (ac) and (d) represent the thermal image data at 0 s, 20 s, 40 s and 60 s,
respectively.

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C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

Fig. 4. (a) Infrared thermal image of the blood vessel. (b) The edge detection result by the Canny algorithm, r = 2. (c) The edge detection result of the blood vessel.
(d) The segmentation result of the blood vessel with the size of 249 ) 121.

increased to the maximum in sequence. When removing the laser,

the thermal distribution would recover and then thermal diffusion
increased in the tissue and microvessels as depicted in (d).
It is apparent that the above findings accorded well with the
theoretical analysis and supposal. For example, the infinitesimal
time interval and travel distance of the heat flux pulse can be estimated from the thermograph sequences or thermal video. Therefore, the average velocity of the blood flow could be estimated by
means of the theoretical model in which the infinitesimal time
interval was determined by the moment when each spot increased
to the maximum temperature.
On the basis of the above analysis, the heat flux pulse on the
main auricle artery during the laser heating stimulation can be calculated from the thermograph sequences, which was determined
by the vascular location on the thermograph. To address these difficulties, we have also developed an efficient image processing
algorithm to segment the vascular area and then formed a vascular
location template to process the image sequences. Detailed process
was listed as follows:

3.2.2. Blood flow velocity estimation

Based on the main auricle artery location template with size of
249 ) 121, the dynamic heat flux pulse information can be collected and actually 249 image pixels (i.e. temperature values) in
the central axis line of the vascular area were extracted from each
image. Fig. 5 represented the temperaturetime response profile of
11 spots extracted from the central axis of the vascular area; here
the interval between two adjacent spots is 20 pixels. The length of
the main auricle artery was about 50 mm, and Dy = L /N, N denotes
the thermal image height of the vascular area.

Spot1
Spot2
Spot3
Spot4
Spot5
Spot6
Spot7
Spot8
Spot9
Spot10
Spot11

44

Temperature, C

46

42
40
38
0

(b)

20

40

60

Time, s

80

46

100

120

Spot1
Spot2
Spot3
Spot4
Spot5
Spot6
Spot7
Spot8
Spot9
Spot10
Spot11

44

Temperature, C

Step 1: low-pass filtering to contrast the thermal image of vascular region.

Step 2: Canny edge detection algorithm was used to perform the
edge detection of the vascular area. Here, it was noted that the
variable r of Gaussian Filter which was utilized to denoise the
original image had a great effect on the edge detection result.
Step 3: firstly, the edge of the ear artery image can be obtained
by setting r = 10 which was the rough edge of the vascular. Secondly, morphological processing was used to remove blood offshoots of the edge. Then, AND operation between the
preprocessed edge and the edge with r = 9 has been performed.
Step 4: set the r descending from 10 to 2 and repeat the Step 3.
The procedure will continue until the vascular backbone was
segmented, as shown in Fig. 4c and d.

(a)

42
40
38
36
34
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Time, s
Fig. 5. The temperature response profile during the laser heating and recovering
period in blood vessel region. (a) and (b) denote the first and second experiment,
respectively.

According to the theoretical model, the average blood flow

velocity can be calculated as follows:

1
L
Dy
L
PN
1 PNN
Dt
i1 Dt i
i1 Dt i
N

where Dti denote the time interval between ti and ti&1 which represent the moments when i and (i & 1) spots reached the maximum
value in the axis of the artery area during the laser heating, respectively (i = 1, . . . , N).
Through the above calculations, the average blood flow velocities of 36.94 mm/s and 38.74 mm/s have been estimated for the
left and right auricle artery, respectively.

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C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

4. Validation and correction on the flow velocity measurement

4.1. Comparative experiment of the ultrasonic Doppler
To further demonstrate and validate the accuracy of the above
estimated method, the Doppler ultrasound technique was utilized
to measure the average flow velocity of the main auricle artery.
Three Doppler tests were conducted in the laser exposure spot,
and the average blood flow velocity of 71.71 mm per second was
consequently calculated by the digital image processing technique
which was averaged by the four results (i.e. the two measuring results of 69.81 mm/s and 70.25 mm/s are for the left auricle artery;
that of 74.05 mm/s and 72.71 mm/s are for the right auricle artery).
It can be noted that there existed somewhat a difference between
the Doppler ultrasound results and the estimated value by the theoretical model as proposed in this paper, which might lie in the
thermal response time delay as analyzed in the following.
Supposing there is a marker in the blood flow with an average
velocity of 71.71 mm/s, it would take about 0.6973 s to finish flowing through the main auricle artery with length of 50 mm. It can be
noted that the thermal response during the interval of 0.6973 s
should be a rather short transient process. In addition, based on
the above preliminary model and in vivo conceptual experiments
for estimating blood flow velocity, it can be concluded that the
transient time captured on the temperature changes of auricle artery plays a pivotal role in evaluating the blood flow velocity. However, the commercially available infrared thermal imaging system
with a thermal sensitivity of 0.065 "C also has certain limitation
when recording some transient phenomenon. Therefore, it is the
absence of transient information of temperature changes of tissue
that leads to deviation in the thermal measurement. To sum up, the
blood flow velocity estimation error might be induced by a delayed
response time for a certain temperature change of rabbit tissue
which is to be addressed below.
4.2. Correction modeling on thermal response time
As discussed in the above section, the estimated blood flow
velocity could be corrected by the establishment of appropriate
thermal response time model to some extent. For the thin rabbit
ear model, the lumped parameter model could be introduced to
perform the thermal response time modeling [27].
As depicted in Fig. 6a, the biological tissue model with one vascular consisted of a blood vessel with the constant temperature Tb,
the biological tissue with the mass of M and the average temperature Tt. Convective heat transfer was considered between the blood
vessel and biological tissue, and between the tissue and surrounding air, respectively. For simplicity, a cylinder model was utilized to
simulate the biological tissue with one vascular as shown in
Fig. 6b. Here, we suppose that the blood vessel temperature Tb
and air temperature Tf on the micro-length DL are constants. Thus,
the lumped-parameter model can be expressed as:

hf A1 T f & T t hb A2 T b & T t MC

dT t
dt

where C is the heat capacity; hb and hf denote the convective heat

transfer coefficient of blood and air, respectively; A1 = 2pR2DL and
A2 = 2pR1DL represent the surface area of the micro-volume for
the blood vessel and tissue, respectively; M qt pR22 & R21 DL is
the tissue quality.
Thus, the first-order ordinary differential equation can be
obtained as follows:

2hf R2 T f hb R1 T b
dT t 2hf R2 hb R1

Tt
dt
qC t R22 & R21
qC t R22 & R21

Expressing A 2hf R2 hb R1 =qC t R22 & R21 and B 2hf R2 T f

hb R1 T b =qC t R22 & R21 , thus the solution to Eq. (7) can be expressed
as:

Tt

B
exp&At C 0
A

where C 0 & lnT 0 & B=A=A is the initial solution.

Therefore, the response time Dt for the tissue temperature
change DT (with the initial temperature T1) can be estimated by
the following expression:

Dt

!
"
1
T 1 & B=A
ln
A
T 1 DT & B=A

4.3. Result analysis

In this section, the correction results for evaluating the blood
flow velocity of the main auricle artery can be performed by the
correction model constructed in above section. Typical tissue properties [2729] were adopted as given as: C = 3.6 MJ/(m3 "C),
kb = 0.5 W/(m "C),
hf = 10 W/(m2 "C),
Tf = 28 "C,
Tb = 38 "C,
hb = Nu*kb/D. We supposed the Nusselt number Nu = 4 and D was
the diameter of the blood vessel which was measured and approximately set as 1 mm. Referring to the former measurements on the
rabbit ear anatomy [30], the thickness of ear tissue was set as
0.7 mm. The initial value for T1 was 37.45 "C which was calculated
by averaging temperaturetime profiles as depicted in Fig. 5.
However, the typical tissue parameters utilized in this model
might lead to some uncertainty problems in evaluating the dynamic thermal expression of blood flow, for instance, the real-time
measuring skin temperature T1 and blood flow temperature Tb varied during the laser heating. In order to reduce the effect of the variable, the response time Dti associated with the variable
Tmi = Tm + i/10 has been calculated using Eq. (9), (the subscript m
denotes 1 or b; i = 1, . . . , 30) which was averaged to obtain the ultimate response time.
Through the above calculations, the calibrated results for evaluating the average blood flow velocity of left and right auricle artery
were 56.98 mm/s and 62.57 mm/s, respectively. Compared to the
Doppler ultrasound results, the calibration model indeed improved
the estimation accuracy of blood flow velocity.
It is known that physiological parameters appear somewhat different among individuals. To understand their effects on the correction model, more tests were also made by employing different

Fig. 6. (a) Denotes the schematic illustration of the biological tissue with one vascular model. (b) Denotes the simplified cylindrical model for lumped parameter model.

C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

Table 1
The experimental results of physiological parameter effect on the correction model.
The physiological parameter variable

The average blood flow velocity

V (mm/s)

a
b

Lefta

Rightb

Tb ("C)

38
39
40
41

56.98
57.87
58.84
59.92

62.57
63.70
64.95
66.32

hb W/(m2 "C)

1920
2000
2080
2016

58.84
56.98
55.41
54.60

64.93
62.57
60.60
58.93

hf W/(m2 "C)

5
10
15
20

53.16
56.98
63.13
74.77

57.82
62.57
70.48
86.43

Denotes the left auricle artery of the experimental rabbit.

Denotes the right auricle artery of the experimental rabbit.

blood flow temperature Tb and convective heat transfer coefficient

hb and hf. The results in Table 1 indicated that the initial value of
blood flow temperature Tb varying from 38 "C to 41 "C, had a little
impact on the evaluation of the average velocity, here hb = 2000 W/
(m2 "C) and hf = 10 W/(m2 "C). In addition, the convective heat
transfer coefficient hb and hf have also been explored to understand
the effect on the velocity correction model, where there exited one
variable hb or hf, the other two constants derived from Tb = 38 "C,
hb = 2000 W/(m2 "C) and hf = 10 W/(m2 "C). The results indicated
that hb had negligible effect on the correction model. However,
the variable hf leading to considerable effect should be measured
accurately in future studies and experiments. Furthermore, we
have also evaluated the error sensitivity of the proposed method
induced by the fluctuations of these parameters, which can be calculated by (V & V0)/V0, here, V and V0 represent the estimated
velocity of fluctuated and typical parameter, respectively. The
average error sensitivity results of 5.17%, 5.85% and 21.94% have
been respectively obtained for the blood temperature Tb, convective heat transfer coefficient hf and hb. It is intelligible that the error
sensitivity results further verified the above findings listed in Table 1. Nevertheless, relatively good results have been obtained by
the typical value hf = 10 W/(m2 "C) in this work.
5. Discussions
In this study, a laser induced method based on infrared thermography for enhancing the thermal expression of the superficial
blood flow has been proposed to estimate the average velocity of
the blood flow. Through the blood flow velocity estimation modeling and experimental thermal image data recording and processing, the estimated velocity of 36.93 mm/s and 38.74 mm/s have
been obtained for left and right auricle artery, respectively. In the
present theoretical model, the heat conduction has been ignored
in the vascular area and the Nusselt number Nu was supposed as
a constant referred to the previous studies [28]. Although the estimated velocity results showed relative correspondence to the actual value measured by the Doppler ultrasound technique, the
model simplification would lead to some related estimated error
unavoidably. Therefore, further work should concentrate on the
model optimization seeking to acquire a more accurate velocity
through exploring the complicated heat transfer mechanism in living tissue with superficial artery.
A most challenging and valuable issue facing the thermal physiological state assessment of the blood flow is to determine the
depth of blood vessel. In this work, the two-dimensional image

467

edge extraction method has been utilized to locate the superficial

blood vessel while leaving the vascular depth out of account.
Although the estimated velocity results showed relative correspondence to the actual value, the velocity estimation method would
perform worse for the blood vessel in the deep tissue. In this situation, there may exist a delay time between the skin and blood vessel during the external thermal stimulation, which must be taken
into account when modeling the deep blood flow.
In order to calibrate the estimated results, the lumped parameter model has been introduced to calibrate the estimated error
through compensating the thermal response time for transient
temperature change of rabbit ear tissue. The final calibrated results
of 56.98 mm/s and 62.57 mm/s verified the practicality and feasibility of the method proposed in this work. However, typical biological tissue parameters were employed in the thermal response
correction model, which might differ slightly from the actual
parameters of the rabbit ear tissue with the superficial artery. Thus,
an overall physiologic parameter database concerning the physical
parameters of rabbit ear, such as tissue density, specific heat
capacity, and thermal conductivity is emerging which could greatly
improve the accuracy of the estimated results. To further understand the influence of parameter variables, the study for evaluating
the parameter effect on the correction model has also been performed in Section 4.2. As shown in Table 1, the results indicated
that the convective heat transfer coefficient hb had negligible effect
on the correction model. However, the convective heat transfer
coefficient hf leading to considerable effect should be measured
accurately in further studies and experiments. Based on the above
discussion and analysis, future work should be investigated to develop a more optimized thermal model and enrich the recent biological tissue parameter database, all of which would greatly
improve the accuracy and practical applicability of the blood flow
velocity estimation model proposed in this paper.
Previous studies suggested that the blood flow velocity decreased in the dilated superficial veins during heat stress, while increased during cooling as the vein was constricted. However, the
hypothesis could lead to opposition between thermal and haemodynamic homeostasis [31]. All these findings have suggested the
uncertainty for measuring the real-time blood flow, especially for
the thermal response procedure during the laser heating stimulation, which had a significant and apparent effect on the vascular
physiological state, such as the vascular morphologic structure,
blood flow volume, and blood flow velocity. In this study, the repeated experiments have been performed for both the left and
right ear artery area. It was worth noting that there existed an
obvious difference between the two experimental results, for
example, the average blood flow velocity of 76.04 mm/s and
37.92 mm/s have been calculated for the first and second experiment, respectively. Based on the previous findings and experimental results, it can be concluded that the laser stimulation induced
the blood flow increasing because of vasoconstriction to some extent in the first experiment. And then the blood flow circulation
readily adapted to the laser heating in the repeated experiment
after about 5 min, the blood flow velocity decreased in the dilated
superficial artery. Among the two experiments, it has been shown
that thermal stress may lead to ever-changing blood flow circulatory procedure, which could induce the dynamic expression of related disease. In other words, a fresh disease detection modality
based on measuring the real-time blood flow velocity during various thermal stress conditions could be developed. As described
above, the complicated physiological regulation mechanism concerning the related stimulation would affect the stability of assessing the blood flow. Nevertheless, the laser induced thermal
expression method based on thermography developed in this
study indeed provided a path for understanding the physiological
regulation mechanism. In addition, the non-contact advantage of

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C. Jin et al. / Infrared Physics & Technology 55 (2012) 462468

infrared thermography also guaranteed the stability of physiological state which may alter by contact device or other things.
Nowadays, the multi information integration in the process of
disease diagnosis indeed stimulates the conversion from the traditional medical mode to the new one, which would greatly improve
the efficiency of the disease diagnosis and benefit for the mankind.
The motivation of this study is to develop a blood flow velocity
evaluation approach which can further expand the field of infrared
imaging in medical applications. However, the transient thermal
response capturing would challenge the recent infrared imaging
system, such as imaging resolution and thermal sensitivity. To address the difficulties, the lumped parameter model has been introduced to calibrate the estimated error through compensating the
thermal response time for transient temperature change of rabbit
ear tissue. In addition, the final results verified the practicality
and feasibility of the correction model. It can be concluded that
an appropriate approach for compensating the transient thermal
response is emerging in the field of medical infrared thermal imaging, especially for evaluating the real-time physiologic state.
6. Conclusion
In this study, a laser induced dynamic infrared thermography
method for enhancing the thermal expression of the superficial
blood flow has been proposed to estimate the average velocity of
the blood flow. The blood flow velocity estimation modeling and
in vivo experiment have been performed concerning the superficial
artery of the rabbit ear. Through experimental thermal image data
acquiring, processing and model correcting, the relatively accurate
blood flow velocities of 56.98 mm/s and 62.57 mm/s have been
consequently obtained for the left and right auricle artery, respectively, which also verified the practicality and feasibility of the proposed method in the present work. In conclusion, this study
extends the field of infrared imaging in medical applications, and
the integration of multiple physiological parameters and information will greatly enhance the efficiency of disease diagnosis and
treatment.
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate very much the help from Prof. Shangkai
Gao in conducting Doppler ultrasound experiments. This work is
supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51006114 and the Handicapped Aided Research
Fund from Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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