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Medical thermography uses infrared imaging to detect abnormalities in the body without radiation. It produces multicolor images based on temperature ranges and can be used alone or in combination with other imaging technologies. While controversial in breast cancer screening, it has shown success in detecting other medical conditions.
Medical thermography is a type of imaging used to identify potential problems in the body. As a diagnostic tool, thermography captures infrared images based on blood flow and hot spots or heat paths in a patient. It doesn’t produce radiation like an X-ray does, but it can detect abnormalities through its infrared camera technology, which records heat and motion rather than static images. Some professionals use medical thermography alone as a diagnostic tool, while others use it in combination with X-rays, mammography, and other imaging technologies.
Scans using medical thermography produce multicolor images ranging from bright pinks and reds to blues and yellows across the spectrum. Each color indicates a range of temperatures in the body, and interpretation of medical thermography usually involves matching color formations to irregularities previously found or diagnosed in the field of thermography. There are keys, of some sort, that track the presence of heat and its location, providing clues for diagnosing patients.
While medical thermography is used to locate and pinpoint pain centers, as well as in other medical and even dental evaluations, it is often mentioned as a tool in breast cancer screening. There has been some controversy regarding the effectiveness of thermography in finding cancerous growths early. Some professionals advocate the use of thermographic technology to take images of breast tissue because thermography does not transmit radiation to the patient and has been successful in detecting early-stage cancers in some cases. Studies by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), however, have concluded that medical thermography is not sensitive enough to find evidence of early-stage breast cancer. Both the NIH and USFDA have concluded that it should not be used to replace mammograms, which use X-ray radiation, but that it may be a limited tool for some diagnoses when used with other means of testing.
Advances in medical thermography have led to the use of thermography for the analysis of problems such as extracranial vessel disease, vascular disease, and neuromusculoskeletal disorders. Heat pathways and blocks show areas of inflammation and potential treatment patterns. Alternative medicine practitioners also use heat sensing capabilities to target massage and adjustments to provide relief for acute pain sufferers. Thermography is not a new technology, but the controversy over its effectiveness as a diagnostic tool for breast cancer could lead to new studies and useful discoveries in the future.
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