Boundary element method analysis for the bioheat transfer equation.

In this paper, the boundary element method (BEM) approach is applied to solve the Pennes (1948) bioheat equation. The objective is to develop the BEM formulation and demonstrate its feasibility. The basic BEM formulations for the transient and steady-state cases are first presented. To demonstrate the usefulness of the BEM approach, numerical solutions for 2-D steady-state problems are obtained and compared to analytical solutions. Further, the BEM formulation is applied to model a conjugate problem for an artery imbedded in a perfused heated tissue. Analytical solution is possible when the conduction in the x-direction is negligible. The BEM and analytical results have very good agreement.