Breast Thermography

Mike Godfrey, Primary Health Physician, Bay of Plenty Environmental Health Clinic, provided a presentation on breast thermography. He began by presenting data related to breast cancer incidence, growth rates and mortality, highlighting faster growth in younger women and increasing rates of breast cancer between 1973 and 1988.

Breast cancer mortality, despite all combinations of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, has not changed over the past 50 years.

Mammography, one of the main diagnostic tools for breast cancer, has severe limitations: it is of limited benefit for younger women; it detects only 3-5 cancers /1000 x-rays; and false positives lead to costly investigations. Mammography has not saved lives and its use as a primary diagnostic procedure is now controversial.

He then went on to introduce thermography or thermal imaging, a procedure with a number of applications, which has been used for analysis of breast health. The US FDA approved thermography as an adjunctive diagnostic screening procedure for the detection of breast cancer in 1982.

Thermal imaging operates by detecting thermal symmetry, which indicates balance in thermal regulation, or asymmetry, which indicates impaired control in thermal regulation. Thus, it can detect the subtle physiological changes that accompany breast pathology, whether due to cancer, fibrocystic disease, infection or vascular disease.

Thermal imaging can increase the chances of detecting breast cancer in its earliest stages. Godfrey positioned thermography as part of an early detection programme that also includes breast examination and mammography when indicated.

He presented a history of thermobiological diagnostics, citing a number of studies, for example, a 1977 study that reported 71-93 % accuracy for thermography in a breast cancer meta-analysis and a 1984 study of 37,050 patients in which 56 cancers were detected per 1,000 thermograms versus 5 per 1,000 mammograms (refer slides 15-19). The difference arises because thermography detects precancerous changes undetectable by mammography. Such early indications of abnormality allow for early intervention. Godfrey stressed the need for early intervention to focus on both treatment and patient lifestyle changes, noting that early detection of breast change by thermography buys time for the alteration of underlying carcinogenic factors.

He described the live image screen, used to capture thermograms, and showed a typical breast study involving both lateral and oblique views. He went on to present three case reports demonstrating the value of thermography in breast analysis (refer slides 32-53)

He summarised the function of thermography as that of an adjunct to mammography with an important role to play in the earlier detection and monitoring of abnormal physiology (up to 10 years before a mass presents) and the establishment of risk factors for the development or existence of cancer.
[View Mike Godfrey’s presentation Breast Thermography]