Identification of Thyroid Papillary Carcinoma and Adenoma through Thermal Imaging: Preliminary Results

Abstract

Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-invasive technique used to discriminate thyroid carcinoma (TC) patients from healthy controls (HC) employing cold-stress protocols. This study investigated the capability of IRT to identify TC, thyroid adenoma (TA), and HC without cold-stress protocols. Eleven participants were enrolled, and the maximum temperature showed the best performance in discriminating the three groups, with a difference between the pathological and healthy sides (left vs. right for HC) of 1.15 °C (±0.34 °C) for TC, 0.51 °C (±0.12 °C) for TA, and 0.11 °C (±0.09 °C) for HC. These results could foster the employment of IRT for a non-invasive thyroid tumor diagnosis.

Keywords

• infrared thermography (IRT)
• papillary cancer
• microcarcinoma
• machine learning (ML)