A Brief History
The earliest known use of heat physiology to assess patients dates to Ancient Greece: mud was spread over a patient, and the areas that dried first were thought to indicate regions of concern. The modern lineage of contact regulation thermography developed through the 20th century:
- 1954 — The German Society of Thermography and Regulation Medicine is founded (E. Schwamm).
- 1975 — Dr. Arno Rost defines the standardized program of measurement points, and researchers begin exploring how temperature changes track health conditions over time.
- 1980 — The Eidatherm, a predecessor of today's computerized systems, is built.
- Early 2000s — Decades of research data are compiled.
- Mid-2000s — The contact-regulation-thermography system is re-engineered into its present-day computerized form.
Measuring Physiological Response
- Thermography measures temperature at the body surface and is therefore a test of physiology, not anatomy.
- Empirical data allows likely disease processes to be identified by comparing a patient's physiological response with the profiles of patients known to have progressed to specific diseases.
- Thermography does not image anatomy or measure structural tissue damage.
The Science
- The regulation of dermal (skin) circulation is neurovascular, controlled by the autonomic nervous system.
- When an organ is under stress, the nervous system produces a localized response in the corresponding skin region.
- Heat from muscles, joints, and bones is not conducted to dermal tissue and is therefore not directly measured — the signal reflects autonomic regulation, not deep structural heat.
The Body as a Whole
Diseases often produce patterns of disturbance across several organ systems. Individually, these disturbances may be insignificant; together, they may point to a disease process. Contact regulation thermography lets a clinician visualize these patterns in the thermogram and reaction profile.
Worked Example: Breast Terrain
Consider a thermogram from an actual breast-cancer patient.
Side difference: Before cells become cancerous, new blood vessels form in surrounding tissue. The added circulation produces a measurable left/right difference:
| Breast | Measurement 1 (mean) | Measurement 2 (mean) | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right | 34.9 °C | 34.6 °C | 0.3 °C |
| Left | 33.5 °C | 32.0 °C | 1.5 °C |
Rigid points ("hot spots"): Cancerous cells do not cool the way healthy cells do, producing a rigid point that fails to cool as expected.
Correlated findings: patients who have or progress to breast cancer often show additional features (blocked cervical lymph, rigid sternum, blocked liver point, paradoxical pectoralis response).
The Reaction Profile
Every thermogram includes a reaction profile — a summary of the physiological thermogram that surfaces important information at a glance (for example, a high chest or breast "chaos" reading after the cooling stimulus).