This is one of the first questions ladies ask when they hear about Breast Thermography, and there is a simple answer to it: they are two completely different procedures with two different targets. Can one replace the other?  No, each serves a different purpose.

Mammography looks for EXISTING masses or tumors by compressing breast tissue and sending X-rays through it. The tumor has to be large enough (generally several years in development) and the breast tissue shouldn’t be dense (as it is the case in younger ladies).

Thermography looks for the process of a tumor build up. From very early days of abnormal cell multiplication, new blood vessels will be made to nourish them and so the temperatures in that area rises. Thermography camera registers this temperature rise thereby giving a very early warning signal that the area must be monitored and necessary steps(such as dietary changes etc.) taken. The breast surface temperature reading is done with an infrared camera from several feet away without touching the breast and without sending any radiations to it. The target in Thermography procedure is not to detect a large tumor but to detect small abnormalities in the breast tissue so that the person will take preventive measures to not allow a large tumor build up. Does thermography also see large abnormalities in breast (such as a large tumor)? Absolutely yes. When the camera can see the temperature rise due to a few hundred new cells, it clearly shows the existence of millions of new (tumor) cells. Thermography can be used for any gender and age group.

Neither Mammography nor Thermography can tell if the cell increase(tumor) is cancerous! Only a biopsy (removing some of breast tissue and analyzing it) can determine this. The objective in Thermography is not let a tumor development go unnoticed for many years till it is detectable, then going through the biopsy process or in an unlucky case deal with the already spread of a cancerous tumor to other parts of the body, rather giving an early warning to take action and prevent all that complications.

What is Thermography?

Thermography — or more accurately said for our purpose — Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI), is an industry technique to capture remotely objects’ surface temperatures. Most of us probably have seen this method at least in the movies when somebody holds a “binocular” and “sees” people in the darkness of the night. Those binocular-looking devices are nothing but an Infrared Camera that detects different surface temperatures of objects (being a human, an animal or any other object). Objects in nature are exposed to sun infrared radiation and emit themselves at different rates the infrared energy. The “Infrared Cameras” read with a high degree of accuracy these emitted infrared temperatures off of the surface of an object and the read temperatures can be plotted (with the help of a computer) to “see” the whole or part of the object.

The human body constantly emits infrared energy from the skin surface. The skin is in “communication” with every part of our body through our Nervous System. The “abnormalities” of the body translate into different skin temperatures.

Let us take the “breast thermography” as an example. The infrared camera takes a picture from your breast area (from a few feet away). The camera is capable of reading the temperatures of hundreds of single points of the breast surface. In case of a developing tumor (even in the very earliest stages) the skin temperature will rise as the new tumor cells build their “own” blood vessels, needed for their nourishment, causing a rise of temperature on the skin (via Sympathetic Nervous System). This simple process is so nothing more than taking a photograph with an infrared camera, without a contact to the body and without “sending” anything to it and can be used to monitor the breast (or other parts of the body) of women and men at any age group with zero side effects.

The thermography principle is based on the fact that our Sympathetic Nervous System responds to “physiological” changes anywhere in the body. Unlike other screening methods that target “structural” changes — such as formation of a tumor which has to be large enough to be detected, requiring several years up to a decade — thermography targets the “path” the tumor has to go from a few cells to a large detectable tumor, i.e. the physiological changes in the body that appear parallel to the abnormality formation.