Medical Infrared Thermal Imaging/Thermal Scans
Safe Scans & Screening
The Chiron's front line scanning and screening
technique involves thermal scans. So what are thermal scans? thermal
scan is our easy to remember name for the all the following rather
confusing titles that are commonly used but which all refer to the
same process:
- Medical infrared scanning
- Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging or DITI
- Medical Infrared Thermal Imaging or MITI
- Medical Infrared Scans
And what exactly is a thermal scan?
A thermal scanis a thermal image or scan of the heat being given off by
your body. Unlike other screening technologies which work invasively to
record underlying structures or mass within the body, a thermal
scananalyses the heat that is given off by the body and allows for
immediate display onto a computer monitor. The images obtained provide
an indirect measurement of the metabolic rate of tissue being screened.
Typical scans look like this and can be in colour
or simple grayscale:
The point is that different diseases and abnormalities inside the body
are often characterised by their own distinctive patterns or heat
signatures. The trained thermographer (in our case always a qualified
doctor) can read or interpret these heat patterns with great accuracy.
The advantage of this is that thermal scans' have the unique capability
of monitoring the temperature variations produced by the earliest
changes in tissue physiology.
What is also true is that medical infrared scanning has been evolving
over the past 25 years. But thanks to advances in computers and imaging
technology, it has now come of age as a revolutionary scanning
technique with levels of definition and accuracy that were previously
unimaginable. Since even very minor abnormalities can affect the heat
signatures, it is now possible to see incipient and very minor changes
to tissue and physiology at a much earlier or less obvious stage. With
some diseases and injuries there is now enough scientific evidence to
show that these heat signatures can be analysed with great accuracy
(referred to as sensitivity and specificity in medical parlance);
typical examples are with pain and injury or breast cancer
abnormalities.