Computational study of thermal effects of large blood vessels in human knee joint

This paper is dedicated to present a comprehensive investigation on the thermal effects of large blood vessels of human knee joint during topical cooling and fomentation treatment. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis by taking full use of the anatomical CAD model of human knee joint was developed to accurately simulate the treatment process. Based on the classical Pennes bio-heat transfer equation, the time evolution of knee joint's temperature distribution and heat flux from large blood vessels was obtained. In addition, we compared several influencing factors and obtained some key conclusions which cannot be easily acquired through clinical experiments. The results indicated that the thermal effects of large blood vessels could remarkably affect the temperature distribution of knee joint during treatment process. Fluctuations of blood flow velocity and metabolic heat production rate affect little on the thermal effects of large blood vessels. Changing the temperature of blood and regimes of treatment could effectively regulate this phenomenon, which is important for many physiological activities. These results provide a guideline to the basic and applied research for the thermally significant large blood vessels in the knee organism.