Major amount of thermal radiation emitted by objects is located in a small part of the infrared spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, called the thermal infrared spectrum, and can be observed and measured using thermal infrared measurement cameras. Measuring heat transfer by radiation has proven to be very valuable in medicine. One such medical application is the early detection and monitoring of breast cancers. Since tumours cause the rise in local tissue temperature, they can be observed as small embedded heat sources. The focus of this paper is the construction of new artificial test sets for heat source parameter estimation (such as the sources depth, volume and intensity/size), to be used before the clinical trials. A mixture of ballistic gelatin was used as a heat conductance medium, while a resistor grid (consisting of nine resistors) was used as a heat source, embedded inside the gelatin. Simulation procedure was conducted, resulting with a rank list of parameter configurations for every heat source of the grid. The expected values of parameters were found to be very high on the configuration list, within about 20% of available configurations in the search space. This paper shows a convenient and effective way of testing parameter estimation methods. On the other hand, although ballistic gelatin presents a homogeneous mixture for heat transfer, with similar density and elastic properties as the living tissue, it does not necessarily have same thermal conductance. This provides the possibilities for future development of new materials for comparing parameter estimation methods on artificial test sets, as well as development of more complex materials consisting of multiple layers, thus more accurately emulating the heat dispersion in human bodies.
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