Estudo Numérico da Recuperação Térmica com e sem Hipertermia para Detecção Precoce de Tumores após Hipotermia

. Breast cancer is the main cause of death among women, and infrared thermography is one of the techniques capable of assisting its detection. The objective of this work is to compare the thermal contrasts in the skin surface in the thermal recovery, with and without hyperthermia, after a period of hypothermia in a breast, by a thermographic analysis in the COMSOL software and to verify if the thermal recovery by hyperthermia increases the thermal contrast obtained. The methodology was based on Pennes’ equation in a two-dimensional model of an anatomically similar breast, which presented healthy tissue and with tumor. The obtained results indicated that the application of hyperthermia in the breast thermal recovery does not increase significantly its thermal contrast under the conditions of the numerical model, in addition to causing permanent thermal damage to tissue cells if the time or intensity of the heat flow remains unchanged.Therefore, further studies are still needed to improve infrared thermography techniques so that it is possible to identify breast cancer early.