I’ve heard that after an initial thermogram the patient will need to return in 3 months for another thermogram so that a stable baseline can be established.
This is absolutely unnecessary! The argument for this practice seems to be that there is no way to know on your first thermogram whether or not your body was changing at the time. I have a question, if the follow-up 3 month thermogram showed that there was change, which image set would be the stable baseline? Would it be the first set or the 3 month later set? It sounds like you would need to do another set of images in another 3 months as a tie breaker. But what if this set also showed change? The bottom line is that if you did need to return to do any of this the technology must be useless.

What would you think if your doctor took your temperature, noted it as a fever, and then told you to return the next day to see if this first reading was right? Reading core temperature is no different than a surface recording taken under proper thermal imaging guidelines. Either the information taken on the first thermogram is valuable or the technology is unstable and useless. Research following patients for over 5 years has proven that the thermal patterns and differential temperatures at the surface of the body are remarkably stable and held within a very narrow range. These research studies were used to establish the normative database to which we compare patients when reading thermograms. Thermovascular patterns are as unique as a fingerprint and can be followed with accuracy for decades. It is when there is a change to this stable thermal fingerprint that a problem is signaled.

This begs the question as to why patients are being asked to return in 3 months. I would ask one of these offices for at least one peer-reviewed and published research paper demonstrating the need for this in order to establish a stable baseline. The research has already been done. In the early days of thermography each set of thermal images were taken in triplicate. The patient was acclimated in a temperature controlled imaging room under standard protocols for 15 minutes and then imaged. The patient would then be left for another 15 minutes and imaged again. This was finally repeated once more. In these early days thermologists were unsure about the stability of the process and the possibility of changes. Once the stability of the thermal data was established this practice was stopped. Then, as mentioned above, this was taken a step further by watching the thermal stability of patients for over 5 years. Studies have proven that a single set of thermal images taken under proper guidelines is completely accurate for analysis.

Under the established standards and guidelines for medical infrared imaging, recalling patients for follow-up thermograms is based solely on clinical need. When it comes to breast thermography, follow-up thermograms are performed based on the known metabolism of breast cancers. Under these guidelines each breast must be graded into one of 5 thermobiological (TH) categories. The level of TH grading acts as an individualized risk assessment based on the patients own biology. Depending on the TH grading, and taking into consideration the metabolism of breast cancers, the patient will be asked to return in a reasonable amount of time.

Since it was established over 30 years ago that a single thermogram is all that is needed for immediate analysis, you might want to ask yourself why are some offices having all their initial thermogram patients return in 3 months?