Tehran University Medical Journal

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Background: Currently, there are many techniques to measure subcutaneous body fat but these methods have many limitations. In this study, we tried to provide a clustering algorithm to measure the thickness of subcutaneous fat in thermography images. Methods: For the detection of subcutaneous adipose tissue in the midline area (from pubis to the xiphoid process), imaging takes place in the right or left lateral sides of the concerned person and to detect this tissue at the left and right flank (from ribs to the iliac crest), imaging takes place from the front. This study was done on 100 subjects (50 female, 50 male) of patients referred to the Shahid Mobini Hospital of Sabzevar since April 2013/4 to December, 2013 and the thickness of their subcutaneous fat in midline abdomen from pubis to the xiphoid process and flank from ribs to the iliac crest were measured based on thermal model and using K-Means and Fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering methods and also recursive connected components algorithm. Results: Subcutaneous fat tissue can quickly appear in the thermogram as an area of low temperature and since in the thermal images, temperature is characterized by the color, as a result, subcutaneous fat tissue must have lower levels of color (temperature) relative to internal body tissues. All the measurements based-on thermal images to determine the maximum thickness of subcutaneous fat were compared with ultrasound. The results of our method were similar to the results of ultrasound method done by a radiologist, with the acceptable approximation. Conclusion: The method presented in this paper is considered as a noninvasive and cost-effective method to measure the thickness of subcutaneous body fat.

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Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and one of the leading of death among them. The high and increasing incidence of the disease and its difficult treatment specifically in advanced stages, imposes hard situations for different countries’ health systems. Body temperature is a natural criteria for the diagnosis of diseases. In recent decades extensive research has been conducted to increase the use of thermal cameras and obtain a close relationship between heat and temperature of the skin's physiology. Thermal imaging (thermography) applies infrared method which is fast, non-invasive, non-contact and flexibile to monitor the temperature of the human body. This paper investigates highly diversified studies implemented before and after the year 2000. And it emphasizes mostly on the newely published articles including: performance and evaluation of thermal imaging, the various aspects of imaging as well as The available technology in this field and its disadvantages in the diagnosis of breast cancer. Thermal imaging has been adopted by researchers in the fields of medicine and biomedical engineering for the diagnosis of breast cancer. With the advent of modern infrared cameras, data acquisition and processing techniques, it is now possible to have real time high resolution thermographic images, which is likely to surge further research in this field.  Thermography does not provide information on the structures of the breast morphology, but it provides performance information of temperature and breast tissue vessels. It is assumed that the functional changes occured before the start of the structural changes which is the result of disease or cancer. These days, thermal imaging method has not been established as an applicative method for screening or diagnosing purposes in academic centers. But there are different centers that adopt this method for the diognosis and examining purposes. Thermal imaging is an effective method which is highly facilitative for breast cancer screening (due to the low cost and without harms), also, its impact will increase by combining other methods such as a mammogram and sonography. However, it has not been widely recognizesd as an accepted method for determineing the types of tumors (benign and malignant) and diseases of breast tissue.