Obrazowanie termiczne w podczerwieni w diagnostyce medycznej – stan i perspektywy

Omówiono stan i perspektywy rozwoju techniki obrazowania termicznego w podczerwieni w diagnostyce medycznej. Jest to dziedzina szybko rozwijająca się, o sporych możliwościach aplikacyjnych ze względu na unikalne cechy łączące możliwości obrazowania zarówno procesów fizjologicznych, funkcjonalnych, jak i badań o charakterze strukturalnym. W szczególności omówiono postępy w rozwoju Aktywnej Termografii Dynamicznej. Przedstawiono wybrane zastosowania w praktyce klinicznej, które zilustrowano wynikami uzyskanymi we współpracy z szeregiem klinik GUMed.

This paper is devoted to developments of IR-thermal imaging in medicine. Most authors active in this field issued the monograph [1]. Some of them are members of the European Society of Thermology; some are specialists in QIRT – Quantitative InfraRed Thermography, too. Recently they participated to the 132 ICB Seminar “Advances of InfraRed thermal imaging in medicine” in Warsaw, July 2013. Here the conclusions of this meeting are summarised. IR-thermal imaging for many years was classified; finally in sixties of XX Century in the USA one of military cameras was applied to medical diagnostics, starting a new imaging modality [2]. Discovery of this technology in medicine was regarded at this time as almost a miracle – a versatile and absolutely non-invasive, objective and quantitative modality. Unfortunately due to lack of standards and miss-use of cameras in thermal mammography, medical professionals for many years gave up this modality. It took many years to recover this very useful technology and to place it as one of the most important modern diagnostic tools, again [3]. The milestone factors are quantification of IR-thermal imaging in 80-ties, development of quantitative NDT (non-destructive testing) methods in 90-ties [4], development of compact IR-cameras with FPA un-cooled detectors, around 2000 [5] and development of dynamic IR-thermal imaging algorithms: active dynamic thermography ADT and thermal tomography TT [6], thermographic signal reconstruction TSR [7], which made the technology matured, relatively inexpensive and easily available on the market. Some results of research grants devoted to applications of thermography in medical diagnostics performed in the Department of BME GUT with several clinics of GUMed are shown.