Thermography and Dentistry
According to Wikipedia, “Thermography or thermology is the medical science that derives diagnostic indications from highly detailed and sensitive infrared images of the human body. Thermology is sometimes referred to as medical infrared imaging or tele-thermology and utilizes highly resolute and sensitive thermographic cameras
In medicine, there is some use, which is still under debate, for early detection of breast cancer. With current methods patients go through radical procedures to treat areas with suspicious lesions. The idea is to get a diagnosis as early as possible. According to thermography advocates the suspicious area can picked up when the lesion is smaller.
This approach could be used in dentistry. All of this data comes from an article: www.positivehealth.com/article/dentistry/thermography-in-dental-practice
“Thermography compares the right side with left side of the face. The reason for the difference in temperature now has to be investigated. It has always created controversy in the academic world and has not been generally accepted as either accurate or useful. However, recent advances in the technology of thermal cameras and their software have, in our view, rendered these objections invalid. Provided the variables are controlled as discussed below, we have found thermography to be both accurate and useful.
Thermography picks up physiological and functional changes in tissues that occur before any structural changes can be seen. Thermography could be used to screen all patients; it can pick up pathological changes before any of the conventional diagnostic aids such as radiographs and ultrasound.
Thermography is non invasive, no ionizing radiation is used, no physical contact is made with the patient and it can be used to detect inflammation and as a monitoring tool post treatment. These are distinct advantages over all other diagnostic systems. Thermography can only show radiant heat pictures with increased heat meaning inflammation. This can detect infection in the tissues is picked up earlier than with any other diagnostic aid as it shows physiological rather than physical or structural changes. Physiological changes always occur before physical changes.
Thermography has a history of early cancer detection; in breast cancer it is more reliable than Mammograms and picks up pathology some three years earlier than mammograms without using thermography in the last year which was later confirmed.
Increased heat means inflammation in an area. Dentally this could be in the maxillary sinus, active gingival infection, abscessed or necrotic teeth, root filled teeth, cavitation infection, retained roots, third molar extraction sites and so on.”
With our currect technology of Vizilite and Velscope, there are a significant number of suspicious readings that prove to be nothing. Although it is great if a patient does not have oral cancer, I hate putting a patient through the worry and expense of a referral trip to the oral surgeon. If thermography can locate a cancer early and save the patient, well that’s what we want. Currently, left to the traditional visual inspection, it is virtually impossible to spot early oral cancers, which are statistically on the rise in the United States.