Quality assurance for thermal imaging systems in medicine

Infrared thermal imaging was first made available to medicine in the early 1960's. Despite a large number of research publications on the clinical application of the technique, the images have been largely qualitative. This is in part due to the imaging technology itself, and the problem of data exchange between different medical users, with different hardware. In 2001 an Anglo Polish collaborative study was set up to identify and resolve the sources of error and problems in medical thermal imaging. Standardisation of the patient preparation, imaging hardware, image capture and analysis has been studied and developed by the group. The collection of normal reference images from a multi-centred study is required, but is dependant in improved reliability and cross calibration of camera systems. This paper specifies the areas found to be the source of unwanted variables, and the protocols to overcome them.