3D Multilayer Foot Model based on CT Medical Imaging Processing for the Study of the Diabetic Foot Complication

Diabetes mellitus is a worldwide problem and unfortunately, the number of patients is still increasing. Diabetic foot is a diabetes mellitus complications and early diagnosis and treatment are related to understand human physiology from a quantitative and measurable point of view. This paper presents a multiphysics simulation using 3D finite element modeling from medical images. Since there is no background in the simulations with 3D models, it was proposed to explore the implementation of the 3D reconstruction from medical imaging to obtain approximations according to an anatomical geometry of the foot, as a main goal to be used in future simulations to study the diabetic foot. It was carry out a preliminary time-dependent simulation to get a surface temperature distribution using specific physical properties for each tissue layer. Also, it was compared as a first approximation the solution time and number of degrees of freedom for the quadratic and linear discretization. The results obtained by both methods were the same however, linear discretization was 6 times faster and with 4.5 times fewer degrees of freedom compared to quadratic discretization.