My daughter recently heard a doctor speak of thermo-gram imaging being used instead of the usual mammograms on women for breast detection of cancer. It is a total body scan that can see problems years before the usual x-rays can find them. She has sent me the book and the findings are really interesting. Curious to know if anyone has had one of these and what are their opinion of this. I can't seem to find anyone around where I live that even knows what I am speaking. Anyone know ???

-- Helena (windyacs@npacc.net), November 08, 2001

Answers

Response to Anyone Heard of Therm0-gram Imaging ???

These have been around for several years but I have not heard of them being used instead of or in relation to a mamogram.

Being a paralegal for many years, we dealt with auto accident injuries and would use the thermalgram in detecting injury that is not always seen on regular xray or scan.

These are quite controversial. Some medical experts believe them to be the best overall indicator and others completely dismiss them. Here is how it works - at least for injuries:

You are put in a room that is quit chilly! It is an xray type machine that takes pictures (there are even ones that move like a scan). It detects heat patterns in your body. The therory is that injuries will show a "hotter" spot than the other surronding tissue. The machine prints out a thermal imagining of the xrayed/scanned area. The cool spots will show blue - hotter spots yellow, orange, up to red.

I really could not comment on how they would work to detect breast abnormalities; although I have seen these scans turn up some pretty amazing things when just looking for injury. Perhaps there they have developed a more sensitive one for detecting breast cancer.

-- Karen (db0421@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.