Oral cancer has become one of the most critical types of cancer today due to its late diagnosis in Brazil. The early detection is mandatory for more favorable prognosis but it depends on patient's information, specialized infrastructure and trained professionals not always available. The use of thermographic imaging becomes a viable alternative for patient screening and triage in different areas. This is a non-invasive and low-cost procedure, especially when compared to the main imaging tests such as magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography. Thus, the aim of this work was to develop a computational model capable of representing the thermal behavior on the surface of the tongue tissue in the presence or absence of malignant neoplasms. The obtained results did not show changes in the temperature profile of the tissue when a small tumor (up to 2 mm in radius) is present. It can be concluded that it is not possible to detect a tumor in the tongue through a thermal analysis on the surface with thermographic images, due to the low differences obtained. However, other conditions for the model and also tumors in other locations should be studied in order to obtain more general conclusions.