TITLE:
The Use of Liquid Crystal Thermography in Selected Technical and Medical Applications—Recent Development
AUTHORS:
Jan Stasiek, Marcin Jewartowski, Tomasz Aleksander Kowalewski
KEYWORDS:
Liquid Crystal Thermography; Steady-State and Transient Method; Vortex Generators; Biomedicine
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Crystallization Process and Technology,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
26,
2014
ABSTRACT: Thermochromic liquid crystals (TLC) and
true-colour digital image processing have been successfully used in
non-intrusive technical, industrial and biomedical studies and applications.
Thin coatings of TLC at surfaces are utilized to obtain detailed temperature
distributions and heat transfer rates for steady or transient processes. Liquid
crystals also can be used to make the temperature and velocity fields in
liquids visible by the simple expedient of directly mixing the liquid crystal
material into the liquid (water, glycerol, glycol, and silicone oils) in very
small quantities to use as thermal and hydrodynamic tracers. In biomedical
situations, e.g., skin diseases,
breast cancer, blood circulation and other medical application, TLC and image
processing are successfully used as an additional non-invasive diagnostic
method especially useful for screening large groups of potential patients. The
history of this technique is reviewed, principal methods and tools are
described and some examples are presented. Also steady-state and transient
liquid crystal thermography (LCT) is used to measure local heat transfer on a
plate equipped with transverse vortex generators. Automated evaluation allows determining
the heat transfer coefficient without arbitrary influence of human interpretation.