Combining Infrared Thermography and Computational Fluid Dynamics to Optimize Whole Body Cryotherapy Protocols

Abstract

Whole Body Cryotherapy (WBC) can be considered a therapeutic complement consisting in placing the human body in a hermetic chamber within which temperature varies between -110∘ C and -60∘ C over a short period of time. Despite the benefits of cryotherapy, subject safety must be ensured during the exposure to extreme cold, in the sense that the physiology of the human body should not be altered. Thus during a WBC session, accurate knowledge regarding the thermal transfer occurring at the cutaneous surface of the patient is essential. To this end, aeraulic and thermal conditions within the cryotherapy cabin are fundamental. The experimental study presented in this paper is based on the acquisition of skin temperature mappings. The derived boundary conditions are applied to the associated numerical problem which is solved using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).