Breast cancer detection: A comparative review on passive and active thermography

Abstract

Breast cancer is the main cause of death among women due to cancer. Early detection is crucial in controlling the disease. Thermography is a non-invasive imaging method that uses temperature differences on the breast surface to identify tumors. This paper focuses on the various aspects of thermography as a diagnostic tool for detecting breast cancer. It includes a review of the currently existing active thermography approaches used to energize the tumor cell to enhance the thermal contrast on the surface. The comparison of passive and active thermography showed that active thermography was more effective, increasing depth-dependent performance from 3 mm to 9 mm for 1.5 mm sized tumors and accuracy from 54% to 82% without a rise in false positive rates. The contrast between malignant and benign tissue also improved from 0.6 °C to 0.9 °C, indicating that active thermography increases the performance of passive thermography in various aspects. A comparative study of active thermography reveals that healthy tissues are likely to be damaged if the input parameters are not regulated properly. A comprehensive comparison of various tumor estimation algorithms in the paper concludes that the dynamic analysis using an active approach outperforms static analysis due to a significant decrease in error percentage.