Thermal signature of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers

Abstract

In this work the thermal signature of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers is investigated in order to be used as a noninvasive aid in the diagnosis and the vascular assessment of these types of skin cancers. Thirty patients with melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers were examined in order to obtain their temperature profile. The results show that there is a characteristic thermal signature for different types of skin neoplasms which not necessarily depend exclusively on their vascularity. Basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas showed a larger range of vascularity, while the thermal profile remained basically constant for squamous cell carcinomas and varied a lot for basal cell carcinomas. In the case of melanomas they showed a high vascularity and an almost constant thermal signature which indicates that metabolic heat production is more relevant in assesing agressiveness. Basal cell carcinomas showed a big range in temperature profiles and a big range in vascularity, a correlation between vascularity and temperature profile was observed when analyzing each subtype of basal cell carcinoma, which indicates that the thermal behavior of basal cell carcinomas is highly dependent on their subtype. With squamous cell carcinoma a big range in vasculature was measured however the temperature range of their thermal profile did not change significantly which indicates that there might be a metabolic heat production - vasculature parameter that appears to remain constant. These results are a step forward in designing a thermal model for skin neoplasms.