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IN VIVO TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS *
Author(s) -
Davis Thomas P.
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
acta ophthalmologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.534
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1755-3768
pISSN - 1755-375X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-3768.1963.tb05163.x
Subject(s) - computer science , thermal , function (biology) , steady state (chemistry) , temperature measurement , mechanics , mechanical engineering , mathematics , thermodynamics , engineering , physics , chemistry , biology , evolutionary biology
The measurement of non‐steady‐state temperatures in biological material presents special problems fundamentally related to the temperature concept. These problems may be divided into those of technique and those of theory. Technical requirements are well recognized and include the need for a small temperature sensing element in close thermal contact with the material under study. The response time of the temperature sensing and recording apparatus must be short compared with the period of the hyperthermic episode, and the physical position of the thermoelement within the body and the temporal events in the heating cycle must be known precisely. Experimental procedures should be guided by a careful mathematical analysis of the system under study; without an adequate theoretical study a temperature measurement per se is of no predictive value. Ideally, the analysis should proceed from a reasonably faithful model of the actual system of interest to a formal analytical solution of the model. This solution will dictate the appropriate physical measurements to be made, while the latter will validate the model and provide the necessary numerical values of the parameters of the solution. When this has been accomplished, the problem is solved, within the limitations of the model. Finally, it must be stressed that in studies of thermal injury, the establishing of the temperature response of a biological system is but the first step in the overall problem of relating thermal insult to resultant biological damage. The second step requires a relation between temperature and injury. It has been established that damage is not a function of the maximum temperature at is not now known with sufficient generality to allow confident predictions of biological injury from temperature response except in a few well‐studied systems (13). This is certainly an area in which much further works remain to be done.