This Section I of Part II was concerned with application of infrared thermography in the medical field; the
first chapter was devoted to human medicine and the second one to veterinary.
Chapter 3 reports on the IRT’s state of art in medicine with methodological approaches and a variety of
applications such as in the diagnosis of breast cancer, in ophthalmologic surgery, in cardiovascular surgery,
in the visualization of ischemic tissues and in many others. As illustrated in this chapter, infrared
thermography roused soon interest, since the middle fifties, in the medical community owing to the
Hippocrates’ criterion to diagnose diseases in humans from temperature features. But, there was also wide
skepticism and loose of interest mainly due to lack of well assessed procedures and difficulties in the data
interpretation also because of the poor sensitivity of old devices. Renewed interest is today justified by the
availability of computerized FPA high performance cameras. However, the infrared thermography is still
not adequately exploited in medicine because there are still difficulties in the interpretation of thermograms.
What is the situation in veterinary?.....
