Infrared Imaging for Screening Breast Cancer Metastasis Based on Abnormal Temperature Distribution

Medical infrared imaging is obtained by measuring the self-emitted infrared radiance from the human body. Infrared emission is related to surface temperature and temperature is one of the most important physiological parameters related to health. Though recent applications such as security identification and oriental medicine have provided new fields of biomedical applications, infrared thermography has had ups and downs in its usages in cancer detection. Some of the main difficulties include finding proper applications and efficient diagnostic algorithms. In this study, infrared thermal imaging was used to detect regional metastasis of breast cancer. Our measurements were done for 110 women. From 63 individuals of a Healthy Group and a Benign Breast Disease Group, we developed algorithms for differentiating malignant regional metastasis based on temperature difference and asymmetry of temperature distribution. Testing with 47 cancer patients, we achieved a positive predictive value of $87.5\%$ and a negative predictive value of $95.6\%$ . The results were better than for mammogram examination. A proper analysis of infrared imaging proved to be a highly informative and sensitive method for differentiating regional cancer metastasis from normal regions.