Estimation of Tumor Characteristics in a Skin Tissue by a Meshless Collocation Solver

Abstract

This paper aims to noninvasively estimate the sizes and locations of tumors via the surface temperature in the skin tissue. The famous 2D Pennes bioheat transfer equation is used to describe the heat transfer behavior in the skin tissue, which is solved by the recently-developed meshless generalized finite difference method (GFDM) in the proposed solver. The hybrid optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) and Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm (LM) is introduced to estimate the sizes and locations of tumors. The efficiency of the proposed GA–LM–GFDM solver is verified under several benchmark examples. Numerical investigation shows that the tumor characteristics can still be accurately estimated with the contaminated temperature data measured on the skin surface.