Infrared thermography based image construction for bio-medical applications

Scanning and imaging techniques, when applied to medicine, are helpful in diagnosis of some critical illnesses that affect human beings. Imaging techniques use the electromagnetic spectrum for the construction of internal anatomy, visibility of organs, and for detection of tumors and other such anomalies. Infrared Radiation (IR), which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, is a potential alternative in medical imaging, as it is non-invasive and non-ionizing. Thermal (or infrared) radiation emission from human body will be higher around the regions where an anomaly such as a tumor is present inside the body - essentially due to increased cell related activity. In the work reported here we use the IR energy measurement from the body surface to contour a tumor inside. As the radiation and the attendant attenuation are non-linear, it is quite involved to interpret the IR energy measured outside the body. However, we attempt to develop an inverse function to estimate parameters of tumor. We use some strong assumptions (can be described as trivializing the clinical value by medical scientists and practitioners!) to get an exact solution to the "tumor contouring" problem and present a framework called ITBIC as a solution. ©2009 IEEE.