Clinical Thermography  Overview

     Use of thermography, or heat differentiation, to detect human ailments has been documented throughout medical literature over the centuries. As early as 400 B.C., physicians would place wet mud or clay over the body and where it dried first was considered to be the diseased part. Hippocrates is quoted as saying "should one part of the body be colder or hotter than the other, disease is present in that part."

     Between 1592-1596, Galileo developed the first thermoscope in an attempt to correlate the relationships between body temperature and a patients state of health. In 1840, Sir William Hirschel, King George III Royal Astronomer, developed the first recorded thermography using colored filters in a large refracting telescope. He announced his findings in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London, and called the invisible rays of the sun, infrared.

     Use of infrared continued to be an investigative science until World War II and the Korean conflict. At this time it was developed by the United States military to monitor troop movements. While still classified, a group of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took what is considered to be the first recorded thermogram of a human subject in 1954. The instrument utilized was a high-resolution infrared scanner, developed by the Barnes Engineering Company, and required approximately one hour of exposure time.

     In 1956, Dr. Ray Lawson established the first known medical application for modern thermography. His first paper on the subject, also published in 1956, was entitled "Implications of Surface Temperature in the Diagnosis of Breast Cancer'. Research continued and in 1963, 28 papers on thermography were submitted to the New York Academy of Sciences.

     Today, we can produce high speed, high resolution thermography by utilizing liquid crystal and telethermographic units in a matter of minutes. Research concerning human applications has evolved at a rapid rate since 1963, and has extended to most health care disciplines. Currently, the majority of research has been established in the United States of America, Europe and Japan, but is beginning to extend into other countries as well. It is estimated that well over 4,000 articles have been written on the subject and have appeared in nearly all leading journals and periodicals.

     Primary researchers in the 1970's were Margaret Abernathy, M.D., Sumio Uematsu, M.D., Charles Wexler, M.D., William Hobbins, M.D. and George Chapman, D.C. Multiple papers and research projects were published by these individuals in the late 1970's and early 1980's. The term Clinical Thermography was first coined by Dr. Chapman in 1978, in an effort to differentiate Medical Thermography as a stand alone diagnostic test and the use of clinical findings with Thermography to clarify a thermographic diagnosis, and direct the treatment course.

     Thermography is a diagnostic technique that measures physiological function by recording thermal heat emission. This provides a territorial analysis of the surface temperature with specific quantitative and qualitative measurements. As a general note, the radiation wave length observed, is at the infrared end of the light spectrum and is considered non-invasive. Special instrumentation is required for this examination, noting that the infrared rays are invisible to the unaided human eye. The thermograms demonstrate these heat emissions as colors or as black and white images. The colors or shades of black and white will differ in various parts of the body, but in a normal healthy individual, the temperature changes should be relatively symmetrical in distribution.

     Because thermography detects alterations or variations in skin temperature, any disease process or injury affecting directly or indirectly the microcirculation of the skin becomes a candidate for thermal evaluation. There are a wide variety of such conditions ranging from specific vascular alterations to secondary or referred conditions.

     At this time, thermography has developed into a state of the art science with specific thermal variables indicating a wide assortment of health problems. To date the primary utilization has been to assess Pain Syndromes, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy and Breast Cancer. Many other types of conditions are also evaluated with thermography (see Indications for Clinical Thermography), but are not as widely published.

Infrared Image Examples

 

*Note: Infrared is above the visible light spectrum and is considered non-invasive. Because of this, thermography poses no danger to patients and tests can be run as often as desired without fear of complications.