Speaker
Description
While not yet a common practice in standard medicine, infrared imaging is emerging as a promising non-invasive tool to support diagnostics, offering functional and physiological insights beyond the capabilities of conventional imaging techniques. By capturing subtle variations in surface and sub-surface thermal patterns, IR imaging provides real-time visualization of hemodynamic changes linked to disease states. The list of diseases that have the potential to be screened using thermal infrared imaging is surprisingly long and a continuous work is underway to test the validity and reliability of this new tool for medical use. The integration of small, radiometrically calibrated infrared cameras further enhances clinical utility by enabling accurate, quantitative temperature assessments in diverse healthcare settings.
The work presented here is a preliminary study that was conducted at Pamukkale University Hospital, within the group of Professor Ahmet Koluman. Thermogram images were acquired using the Radia V60, a new uncooled radiometrically calibrated longwave IR camera from Telops, to investigate its screening utilization potential across various disease groups. The study encompassed individuals diagnosed with breast cancer, peripheral artery disease (PAD), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), thyroid diseases, and the groups were evaluated alongside healthy control groups. For breast cancer, differences in tumor-induced metabolic activity were identified via heat distribution patterns within the thermography images acquired by the infrared thermal camera. It has shown promise as a painless, radiation-free, non-invasive, and rapid preliminary screening method. For PAD patients, acquisitions demonstrated that blood flow impairments in the leg vasculature, resulting from stenosis (narrowing) or occlusion (blockage), manifested as regions of excessive cold (hypothermia) or heat (hyperthermia). JIA patients, a condition predominantly observed in children, showed thermal alterations surrounding the knee joint which were successfully observed in the infrared images. Regions of inflammation within the knee joint were distinctly identified. As for Thyroid disease screening, Within the scope of this study, the acquisitions of the cervical (neck) region demonstrated that the method possesses diagnostic potential, however, owing to this region's susceptibility to environmental influences, the risk of false positivity was found to be elevated. Within this study, a total of 139 individuals were screened using an infrared thermal camera. This study reinforces the potential of IR imaging as a safe preliminary screening tool, especially due to its key characteristic of being: non-invasive, radiation-free, painless, and fast.
