Abstract: A mechanism of quantitative dual-spectrum IR imaging (QDS-IR) system for examining the breast cancer is reported. The major mechanism of the system is a pair of long-wave Infra-red (LIR) and middle-wave Infra-red (MIR) cameras with the keen temperature sensitivity and the high spatial resolution. The optical axes of cameras are calibrated by the help of two calibration makers set up on the seat for carrying an object to make them parallel to each other and locate on the same level. The design provides an imaging system with the high reproducibility supported by 7 free degrees and the high adjustability. The proposed system could ensure the positions of the object and two cameras are the same at the different time points and find the best relative positions between the seat and two cameras for the objects with different body types. Therefore, it has potential ability to detect breast cancer or monitor the effect of chemotherapy.

Abstract: A mechanism of quantitative dual-spectrum IR imaging (QDS-IR) system for examining the breast cancer is reported. The major mechanism of the system is a pair of long-wave Infra-red (LIR) and middle-wave Infra-red (MIR) cameras with the keen temperature sensitivity and the high spatial resolution. The optical axes of cameras are calibrated by the help of two calibration makers set up on the seat for carrying an object to make them parallel to each other and locate on the same level. The design provides an imaging system with the high reproducibility supported by 7 free degrees and the high adjustability. The proposed system could ensure the positions of the object and two cameras are the same at the different time points and find the best relative positions between the seat and two cameras for the objects with different body types. Therefore, it has potential ability to detect breast cancer or monitor the effect of chemotherapy.

Abstract: This algorithm provides a marker-free approach to establishing the pixel correspondence among the IR images taken at different times, which is the basis for quantitatively characterizing the variation of the heat energy and patterns pixel-wise on a breast surface. The idea is to use the corner points of the heat pattern and the branch points of the skeletons of the heat pattern on the body surface as the initial fiducial points for the longitudinal IR image registration. The Thin-Plate Spline technique is used to model the nonlinear deformation between two IR images taken at two different times. Mutual information between the TPS-transformed image and the target image is employed as the metric quantifying the quality of the longitudinal IR image registration. To optimize the registration, Nelder-Mead simplex method is used to locally modify the pairings of the fiducial points in the source and target IR images to maximize the mutual information.

Abstract: Infra-red images of tumors carry the information of normal and cancerous tissues in every pixel. We developed a Dual-Spectrum Heat Pattern Separation (DS-HPS) algorithm to quantify the energy from the area of the high temperature tissues, called qH map, and decompose the body surface into the high and normal temperature areas based on a pair of middle-wave Infra-red images and long-wave Infra-red images. Further, with longitudinal registration, we can detect the cancerous tissues and assess the chemotherapy treatment response on a pixel by pixel basis according to the change of the qH map derived by the DS-HPS algorithm. The preliminary result shows the area and the qH values in the high temperature area are decreased as the patients receive more chemotherapy. These suggest the proposed algorithm could capture the incremental or decremental of the energies emitted by the cancerous tissues, which has the potentials for chemotherapy assessment and early detection.