Theoretical and clinical aspects of the use of thermography in non-invasive medical diagnosis

Abstract

Thermography is a clinical imaging technique that has been applied to diverse pathologies in very diverse clinical areas such as dermatology, rheumatology, oncology and emergency medicine to name a few. Even though there are plenty of reports that indicate thermography could be used in a clinical setting it has yet to fulfill its promise of becoming a commonly used diagnostic technique. One of the main reasons is the lack of standard procedures to obtain and analyze thermograms, standardization has proven difficult due to the lack of collaboration between physicists and physicians that could allow the integration of thermal models to clinical findings. In this general overview of the field several thermography applications are presented along with theory and modeling of thermal processes in biological tissue in an attempt to promote the formation of interdisciplinary teams that could develop medical standards for clinical thermography.