Monitoring of some minor human skin lesions using a skin calorimeter

Abstract

The growing interest of human skin thermal properties is motivating the development of new instruments, either by contact or by remote sensing. In this work, we show the ability of a skin calorimeter to monitor the temporal evolution of the heat capacity and the equivalent thermal resistance of the skin, in two small skin lesions. The first one consists of a forehead wound of 10 × 2 mm2. The other injury consists of a second degree burn on the volar wrist area, of 10 × 20 mm2. We studied the temporal evolution of the thermal properties of both injuries. The variation of heat capacity was significant. For first injury, heat capacity decreased by 21% and full recovery was achieved after ten days. For the second case, the heat capacity decrease was 55% and recovery was achieved after 3 weeks. These skin recoveries are monitored by the measured heat capacity value. The returning of the heat capacity to its normal value coincides with the recovery from the injury.