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Thermal modelling
When heat is deposited in human tissue, there are several mechanisms which transport heat as is demonstrated in the figure on the right. At first, thermal conductivity transports heat in the direction of the temperature gradient. A second mechanism capable of transporting much more energy is convective heat transport. When a large vessel with cold blood enters a piece of heated tissue, it starts exchanging heat with the tissue environment. As the vessel branches become smaller, this heat exchange becomes more significant up to a point where the blood is in thermal equilibrium with the tissue.
