Remote sensing lab for medical thermal physiological assessment

Medical thermal imaging (MTI) has been used for over five decades, more in medical research than in daily clinical practice. However MTI can provide significant information about the peripheral physiology and thus be of a great help on clinic. Since it was firstly used in medicine, thermal image equipment has evolved, computers have been introduced, and guidelines and standards have been drawn. Even being the third oldest medical imaging modality, further developments are needed to achieve the level of other medical imaging methods, which are wider accepted. In addition, more significant technological development and the integration with the medical information systems still to be done. Other obstacles for the method adoption are the disregard of health professionals, the difficulty on getting adequate training and the large sources of error in a MTI examination. Based in this flaw, this document intends to describe the required developments to address MTI wider adoption and integration. In order to reduce the human factor and the examination environmental errors, the technological improvements needed to allow a remote automated assisted MTI laboratory are outlined. With the adoption and implementation of such suggestion, it will be possible, a wider acceptance of MTI among health professionals, a significant reduction of error sources, appropriate MTI operators training and consequent increase in the credibility and its application in clinical daily practice.