What is Infrared Thermal Imaging?
Thermal imaging is a the use of specialized cameras that are able to photograph the relative heat and cold given off by an object. Outside of the human eye's ability to see is a world of heat/thermal that only recently has become accurately detectable by technology. It is the same visual world that some animals such as the snake have always made use of.
Bringing this normally invisible realm into view for people to see has opened this infrared spectrum to be utilized for health analysis purposes. Problems such as unnatural vessel growth, infection, injuries and inflammation emit greater amounts of heat than the nearby areas allowing a trained thermographer to capture this information to see where and what kind of problem may be underlying. Nerve impingements and circulation obstructions can be seen as cool or cold areas. When this data is analyzed by a Board Certified Thermologist the information revealed can be life saving.
The Revolutionary Infrared Camera
The first infrared cameras were developed by the military in the 1950's were very large and cooled with liquid nitrogen tanks, today they can fit in your hand and can digitally detect an almost inconceivable .045 Celsius (thats less than half a hundredth of a degree) temperature differences.
Only the very highest class of infrared cameras have a thermal sensor precise enough to pick up such subtleties. Vital Thermal Imaging uses only this class of thermal imaging camera to be able to get the most accurate and detailed temperature variance while shooting in HD. This combined with computer software for enhancement and analysis makes for previously impossible details to be recorded for professional analysis.
INFRARED IN HEALTHCARE BEGAN IN 5TH CENTURY BC
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, utilized heat emmitance by the body to discover problems in the body 2 1/2 thousand years ago! Hippocrates would cover the body in a thin paste of fast drying mud and observe the locations it dried first indicating hot areas that could indicate disease deeper in the body.
Medical Digital infrared thermal imaging (D.I.T.I.)
Mammograms, ultrasound and MRI are looking for a physical tumor. For cancer to be detectable on a mammogram, it has to have been growing for years in advance.
Thermography, on the other hand, is a test of physiology. Because of DITI’s extreme sensitivity in identifying metabolic activity and vascular circulation (which produces a heat signature), DITI may find thermal markers suggesting a pre-cancerous state of the breast or the presence of an early tumor that is not yet large enough to be detected by physical examination, mammography, or other types of structural imaging.
The thermal camera shoots images in two separate modes - spectral color and reverse gray/white hot. Both give different pieces of information for the doctor who is analyzing the scans.
Adding Thermal Imaging to your “tool box” for breast health can be one of the most proactive steps you can take for the earliest detection of breast disease and can tell you about the status of the health of your breasts.
““Thermography’s accuracy and reliability is remarkable. In the 1970s and 1980s, a great deal of research was conducted on thermography. In 1981, Michel Gautherie, Ph.D., and his colleagues reported on a 10-year study, which found that an abnormal thermogram was 10 times more significant as a future risk indicator for breast cancer than having a history of breast cancer in your family.””
