Towards Dynamic Assessment of Healthy Breast Skin Temperature using Infrared Thermography

Abstract

Breast skin temperature assessment has been of interest since of the first application of Infrared Thermography in Medicine in 1956. Since it many investigations attempted to appraise the method as a screening tool, although reference data is still lacking and dynamic thermal imaging has proved its value in other clinical applications. It is aim of this research to apply a thermal stimulus to the breasts of 11 healthy participants through thermal conduction and convection to determine, which can be feasible in clinical setup for further research involving breast cancer patients. It was found that the use of a conduction stimuli on the nipple for a 1 minute to be the most adequate method.