How a cold challenge reveals the body's regulation
Contact regulation thermography is a functional test. Rather than imaging anatomy, it measures how skin temperature regulates in response to a controlled cooling stimulus — a window into the autonomic nervous system.
The visceral-cutaneous reflex
The autonomic nervous system links each internal organ to a corresponding zone of skin. When an organ is under stress, the nervous system produces a localized change in how that skin zone regulates its temperature.
By reading how more than 20 organs, glands and tissues respond to a brief cold stimulus, the method assesses the body's regulatory capacity — physiology that structural imaging simply cannot see.
Function vs. anatomy
Imaging (MRI, CT, ultrasound, mammography) captures structure — what tissue looks like.
CRT measures function — how living tissue behaves, often years before structural change appears.
119 points, measured twice
Baseline
In a temperature-controlled room (20–23 °C), a handheld contact probe with a built-in infrared sensor reads 119 standardized points.
Cold challenge
The patient sits in cool air for about 10 minutes — a controlled stimulus to the body's thermoregulation.
Second read
The same 119 points are measured again. The difference reveals how well each region regulates.
Each point is classified into one of five regulation states — normal, hypo, hyper, rigid, or paradox — and combined into per-region statistics and clinical indices.
Clinical indices
Vitality Index (VI)
Overall metabolic activity, age-adjusted.
Lymphatic Index (LI)
Immune and lymphatic congestion.
Reaction Index (RI)
Inflammatory vs. degenerative reaction pattern.
Chaos Index (CI)
Temperature disorder within a region — flags primary stress.
Enteropathy Index (ENI)
Intestinal flora / digestive state.
Therapy Index (THI)
Tolerance for invasive therapy.