A self-heated thermistor technique to measure perfusion

Abstract

Self-heated thermistor techniques to measure perfusion suffer from the lack of a widely accepted perfusion model. It has been previously proposed that perfusion be modeled as an effective thermal conductivity. It has also been proposed that effective and intrinsic tissue conductivities can be simultaneously measured using sinusoidal heating of thermistors embedded in tissue. A microcomputer-based instrument was built to measure effective and intrinsic thermal conductivity simultaneously. Measurements in alcohol-fixed canine kidneys supports both of the above hypotheses. It was determined that the optimal sinusoidal heating period to measure intrinsic conductivity in perfused tissue is 20 seconds.<>