The heating cable consists of high resistance wire and is called the hot section. The resistor is in contact with the process that needs to be heated up. The low resistance wire ensures a safe connection of the heater and bridges the distance from the connection point to the process and is called the cold end. The resistor part together with the conductor part is called an element.
Read more about heat tracing and it solution for temperature maintenance and heat loss. You can read more about MI heating cable here.