Análise da transferência de calor de tecidos da região do pescoço e da glândula tireoide usando o método de elementos finitos

• Autor(a) principal: Barcelos, Alexandre Miguel Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFU
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufu.br/handle/123456789/38340
• topic: Glândula tireoide; Tumor; Termografia; COMSOL®; Resfriamento; Temperatura; Thyroid Gland; Thermography; Cooling; Temperature; CNPQ::ENGENHARIAS::ENGENHARIA MECANICA::ENGENHARIA TERMICA

The thyroid is a neuroendocrine gland located just below the larynx on either side of the trachea. It is a structure formed by two lobes, the left and the right, which join through the thyroid isthmus. This gland is located in the neck, often in a butterfly shape just below what is known as the Adam's apple. Functionally, the thyroid regulates the body's metabolism and sensitivity to other hormones, helping to maintain blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tone. Thyroid cancer is a public health problem and has a higher incidence and mortality in the female population. Early detection of thyroid cancer is essential to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with this disease. Some of the methods used to detect thyroid tumors are ultrasound, the most used and recommended exam, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and PET (positron emission tomography). The methods have advantages and disadvantages, such as radiation emission, dependence on the operator to analyze the results, high cost and production of radioactive waste. The main objective of this work is to verify studies on the application of thermography-based methods for tumor detection and to apply thermography methods in numerical thermal simulations using COMSOL® software in a simplified geometry model of the thyroid. Models of healthy tissues and tissues with tumor were simulated in order to evaluate the thermal behavior of these structures. In the future, it is expected that this technique can be applied as an auxiliary technique that already exists in the identification of thyroid tumors. The application of the thermography method that uses the verification of temperature variations on the surface of the model, acting in this project with a cooling, allows the monitoring of temperature changes and the consequent detection of the tumor. The detection of tumors becomes possible due to the cooling of the body during a certain period, which causes a considerable difference in the surface temperature of the neck skin when compared to the models with the presence of tumor and the healthy model. The proposed method of thermography with application of cooling pointed out, preliminarily, a greater sensitivity of the technique to larger inclusions in the thyroid.