Thermal Time Constant CNN-Based Spectrometry for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method based on a convolutional neural network to recover thermal time constants from a temperature–time curve after thermal excitation. The thermal time constants are then used to detect the pathological states of the skin. The thermal system is modeled as a Foster Network consisting of R-C thermal elements. Each component is represented by a time constant and an amplitude that can be retrieved using the deep learning system. The presented method was verified on artificially generated training data and then tested on real, measured thermographic signals from a patient suffering from psoriasis. The results show proper estimation both in time constants and in temperature evaluation over time. The error of the recovered time constants is below 1% for noiseless input data, and it does not exceed 5% for noisy signals.

Keywords

• CNN
• active thermography
• biomedical application
• thermal time constants
• deep learning
• noisy signals