Spatial-temperature high resolution map for early cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Heat is one of the most important parameters of living beings. Skin temperature is not the same on the entire body and so, a thermal signature can be got. Infrared map on serial imaging can constitute an early sign of an abnormality. Thermography detects changes in tissue that appear before and accompany many diseases including cancer. As this map has a better resolution an early cancer diagnosis can be done. The temperature of neoplasic tissue is different up to 1.5 °C than that of the healthy tissue as a result of the specific metabolic rate. The infrared camera images show very quickly the heat transferred by radiation. A lot of factors disturb the temperature conversion to pixel intensity. A sensitive temperature sensor with a 10 Mpixels video camera, showing its spatial position, and a computer fusion program were used for the map with high spatial-temperature resolution. A couple of minutes are necessary to get a high resolution map. The asymmetry and borders were the main parameters analyzed. The right cancer diagnosis was for about 78.4% of patients with thyroid cancer, and more than 89.6% from patients with breast cancer. In the near future, the medical prognosis will be improved by fractal analysis.