Dog Thermal Imaging - Improving Canine Health

Watching documentaries about wolves and the pack behaviours that they exhibit makes it easy to see why it's sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what, or even where any physical problems lie in their domesticated cousins.

Exhibiting signs of weakness results in demotion, or even expulsion from the pack, so many dogs will exhibit innate behaviour and mask problems until they become too great to do so anymore. These behaviours benefit the wild animal, but for our dogs they prolong pain and suffering unnecessarily. Subtle cues, such as a change in temperament, more lethargy, or occasional, intermittent or shifting lameness might be your only clue that something is brewing.

Even if we do listen to these subtle messages we're in a quandary; whatever's wrong isn't enough to call the vet, and if you did, where would he or she start, and at what cost?

"Without a diagnosis, surgery is trauma, medicine is poison, and alternative therapies are witchcraft." A. Kent Allen

There is an answer. Problems in dogs can be detected even before any clinical symptoms, with Veterinary Thermal Imaging. Once the affected area is identified it's easy for your vet to hone in with specific tests, or to start a treatment programme immediately - usually saving time, money, stress and with a better prognosis.

Veterinary Thermal Imaging as a new technology and technique has been perfected over the last thirty years.

Using a camcorder-sized, portable camera, images mapping the surface temperature of your dog (thermograms) can be produced. These provide an excellent correlation to seats of pain, as the physiology (or blood flow) of the dog changes overlying a problem as the body works hard to repair itself. Warmer than expected areas overlie inflammation, infection, muscular spasm, tissue lesions etc, and cooler than expected areas overlie areas of scar tissue, thrombosis, nerve dysfunction, swelling constricting blood flow, muscular atrophy and chronic degenerative conditions such as arthritis.

The first thermogram was produced by Hippocrates 2400 years ago. He laid a wet clay soaked cloth across the thorax of a patient and determined that the area to dry first was the problem. Vets and owners have been feeling legs for centuries to gauge differences in temperature linked to injury. So, whilst observing temperature differences is nothing new, what is new now is how objective and accurate we can be about it. Human hands can detect a 2 degrees Celsius difference, but Thermal Imaging is 40 times more sensitive than this, detecting changes sooner and with more accuracy. Each thermogram is produced from over 80,000 individual temperature readings.

Often dogs don't have just one problem associated with lameness or a bad back. Often there are other secondary causes which may be overlooked, and cause the primary problem to reoccur unless they're also treated. Thermal Imaging is an excellent tool to identify these secondary problems so they can be managed too.

Thermal Imaging is non-contact, non-invasive and doesn't emit any radiation, so can be repeated as often as required with no adverse effects on dog or handler. It doesn't require travelling, sedation, or clipping, the costs compare very favourably with those of other diagnostic tests; and if you use a veterinary referral service it's covered on most insurance policies.