ABSTRACT
Advances in camera technologies and reduced equipment costs have led to an increased interest in the application of thermal imaging in the medical fields [7]. Medical infrared images are typically recorded and stored in digital form, and computerized image processing techniques have been used in acquiring and evaluating medical thermal images [13,26] and proved to be important tools for clinical diagnostics. Yet, these tools rely on the digital images to be in a certain format. Unfortunately, manufacturers of medical infrared cameras have their own proprietary image formats with little or no possibility of data interchange between suppliers. There is therefore a need to develop a standardized format for storing and processing thermograms. In the first part of this chapter, we will show that the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) medical imaging standard [12] can be adopted for this purpose.
