Thermal contrast of active dynamic thermography versus static thermography

The use of steady state thermal patterns in breast cancer screening have shown low specificities, it is believed that by thermally exciting the body with a cold stimulus the temperature contrast will increase as well as the specificity of the technique. In this work computer thermal simulations of breasts subjected to a cold stress and at steady state were performed on a real scanned human female model in order to evaluate the advantages of using active dynamic thermography over steady state thermography. Results show that there is an increase in contrast when performing active dynamic thermography compared to steady state thermography but only in the case of tumors that are close to the surface of the skin. It was also found that the morphology of the torso and breasts appears to play a role in the sensitivity of thermal measurements needed for tumor detection.