Can Thermography Help Women with Endometriosis?

Thermography is an imaging technique that measures the amount of heat radiation coming from an area of the body.

It’s usually used to discover potential cancerous growths, but new research suggests that it can also help find endometriosis in women who have been diagnosed with infertility, which means it could help them get pregnant faster and make it easier for their doctors to recommend the most effective treatment options. Read on to learn more about what thermography can do and whether you should talk to your doctor about scheduling thermography with your next annual visit!

How does Thermography work

Thermography, which can help women diagnosed with endometriosis, uses infrared cameras to find heat in places where there might be growths of tissue. The infrared camera takes images of your body from different angles, including underneath your breasts. A doctor or technician then looks at these images to evaluate your risk of having endometriosis. As a diagnosis tool, thermography helps women by being more sensitive than other methods that are used to check for endometrial growth.

How does thermography differ from other imaging techniques?

Unlike conventional imaging techniques such as MRI or CT, thermography can help women with endometriosis, avoiding invasive procedures and enabling cost-effective, short-term scanning. Compared to MRI or CT, it is less time-consuming, painless, noninvasive, and user-friendly.  It has high sensitivity and specificity for finding endometriosis lesions in both premenopausal and postmenopausal patients. It also has higher diagnostic accuracy than laparoscopy for identifying peritoneal endometriosis.

Can thermography detect endometriosis?

In a review of 21 studies about thermography for endometriosis, 13 of those concluded that it’s possible. According to The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology (AJOG), high-quality studies are lacking on whether thermography can help women with endometriosis. But since surgery isn’t always an option, a diagnostic tool that helps physicians determine how severe a woman’s symptoms are—and therefore how to treat them—could be quite helpful indeed.

Can thermography help women with endometriosis?

The short answer is yes, thermography can help women with endometriosis. As you likely know, endometriosis is a reproductive system disorder that impacts about one in 10 women worldwide, according to research from The North American Menopause Society. However, there are few reliable tools for finding endometriosis in its early stages. During a normal menstrual cycle, healthy tissue called endometrium grows inside your uterus as a result of estrogen release. When your period ends, blood flow recedes along with any extra tissue. Unfortunately, some women experience abnormal growths outside their uteruses during their periods—and those are known as endometrial implants or lesions. These lesions cause inflammation which leads to pain and discomfort during menstruation. Because they’re not always visible on an ultrasound or via physical exam, they can be difficult to find until they’ve become severe enough to cause symptoms such as infertility or chronic pelvic pain (CPP). Thankfully, new technology has recently been developed that may be able to find these tiny lesions before they become severe enough to lead to serious complications like CPP. What is thermography: You may have heard of breast thermography—but what exactly is it? We’ll have to dive into that subject in another article.

Yes, thermography (or thermal imaging) can find endometriosis—and, for some women, a doctor’s thermal scanner can help stir the patient in the right direction toward how to alleviate some of their symptoms. In this day and age, thermography is one of the recommended methods of diagnosis for many ailments, however, some physicians may not be properly trained in its use. Your best bet is to contact a certified thermographer in your area.