SUMMARY OF BREAST THERMOGRAPHY RESEARCH STUDIES from The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, 3rd Edition, 2006, edited by Joseph Brozino

• In 1982, the FDA approved breast thermography as an adjunctive breast cancer screening procedure.

• Breast thermography has undergone extensive research since the late 1950's.

• Over 30 years of research comprising over 800 peer-reviewed studies on breast thermography exist in the index-medicus literature.

• In this database, well over 300,000 women have been included as study participants.

• The numbers of participants in many studies are very large -- 10K, 37K, 60K, 85K ...

• Some of these studies have followed patients up to 12 years

• Strict standardized interpretation protocols have been established for over 15 years

• Breast thermography has a an average sensitivity and specificity of 90%

• An abnormal thermogram is 10 times more significant as a future risk indicator for breast cancer than a first order family history of the disease

• A persistent abnormal thermogram caries with it a 22x higher risk of future breast cancer

• Breast thermography has the ability to detect the first signs that a cancer may be forming up to 10 years before any other procedure can detect it

• Research has shown that breast thermography significantly augments the long-term survival rates of its recipients by as much as 61%

• When used as part of a multimodal approach (clinical examination + mammography + thermography) 95% of early stage cancers will be detected