Cooling and monitoring skin temperature

[ko99]

Does anyone have any experience/pointers/insights on how to cool and maintain skin below it's normal temperature?

A small surface area of skin (~3x3mm) must be maintained at 28C indefinitely. I'd like to create a software model. This would be easy if skin behaved like any solid material of known conductivity, but I've never worked with live human tissue and thanks to pores, skin types, blood circulation, and probably other constantly changing thermal properties, I don't know how to characterize it. Any suggestions?

Accurately monitoring skin temperature in the cooled area is another issue. Any suggestions are most welcome.

Kevin O'Connor

http://www.ECooling.biz

 

[sciguyjim]

Kevin,
What I would do is monitor the temp with a high thermal resolution infrared optical monitor. No contact with a measuring device to affect readings. To control temp, I would design a sensitive device to gently blow air over the measured area. By mixing slightly warm air with slightly cooler air you might get enough control to keep the desired temp regardless of sweating, or the insulating effects of dead skin, oil, and hair.