Abstract
The discovery of infrared radiation by William Herschel in 1800 led to John Herschel’s study of solar radiation that he imaged by evaporography. This he termed a thermogram. The measurement of temperature in medicine advanced with Dr Carl Wunderlich, who showed the significance of the use of temperature measurements for diagnosis of fever and for monitoring the course of temperature in relation to disease. It was William and John Herschel’s discovery of infrared radiation that has ultimately opened up many applications for thermal imaging. Radiometric determination of human body (skin) temperature is now achievable. Remote sensing of infrared radiation first developed in the 1940s and has continued to develop steadily since 1960. Modern high speed and high resolution camera systems have now reached a dramatic level of performance at more modest costs, which medicine can now employ for non-invasive and quantifiable imaging. This has applications in many areas of medicine both for diagnostics and monitoring treatment. In recent years the acute threat of pandemic infection has increased, heightened by today’s ever expanding world travel. Special interest has been shown in the potential of thermal imaging for airport and travel screening. This is in effect where Dr Wunderlich’s studies began, and it has yet to be proven that the technique can be responsibly employed for efficient screening of large numbers of the travelling public.
Highlights
Thermology, the science of heat, is a very wide topic, and applies to many diverse processes of our modern life
For many years contact thermometry was the only means of determining human temperature
Thermometry itself slowly developed from Galileo’s early thermoscope in 1592 to the more usable calibrated scales devised by Fahrenheit (1720) and the metric scale attributed to Celsius in 1742
Summary
Thermology, the science of heat, is a very wide topic, and applies to many diverse processes of our modern life. Son and family friend can be regarded as true pioneers of today’s computerized thermal imaging Another important finding was in 1935, when JD Hardy, an American Physiologist showed that the human skin surface has the characteristics of a near perfect black body radiator, being highly efficient in irradiative heat exchange [4]. Though the images were primitive, it was evident that inflammation due to arthritis in joints showed increased heat emission This led to a more usable, large device being built that produced a better quality image of the human body, a single hand thermogram took 5 min to record [6]. This subsequently renamed to the European Association of Thermology, which holds periodic international conferences across Europe, was most recently held in Madrid September 2015
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