The Thermal Human Body A Practical Guide to Thermal Imaging

This book is a guide for the constantly growing community of the users of medical thermal imaging. It describes where and how an infrared equipment can be used in a strictly standardised way and how one can ultimately comprehensively report the findings. Due to their insight into the complex mechanisms behind the distribution of surface temperature, future users of medical thermal imaging should be able to provide careful, and cautious, interpretations of infrared thermograms, thus avoiding the pitfalls of the past. The authors are well-known pioneers of the technique of infrared imaging in medicine who have combined strict standard-based evaluation of medical thermal images with their expertise in clinical medicine and related fields of health management.

1. History of Thermal Imaging since 1960 2. Basic Thermal Physics: Heat Exchange and Infrared Radiation 3. Basic Thermal Physiology: What Processes Lead to the Temperature Distribution on the Skin Surface 4. Infrared Thermal Imagers 5. Quality Assurance Procedures and Infrared Equipment Operation 6. Standard Protocol and Provocation Tests 7. How Should a Clinical Thermal Image be Recorded and Evaluated?

Kurt Ammer was senior researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Research Unit for Physical Diagnostics, Austria, between 1988 and 2004. Between 1985 and his retirement in early 2013, he was vice director of the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Hanusch hospital in Vienna. Francis Ring took up the post of director of Medical Imaging Research at the University of Glamorgan from which he formally retired in 2017. He is an active member of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) of Great Britain, being on the Science Council, Awards Council, and the Imaging Science Group.