IR thermography for brown fat quantification
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A pilot study into novel 2d and 3d image processing for detecting and quantifying brown fat with IR thermography
IRAS ID
317238
Contact name
Ceri Jones
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Brown fat is a special type of fat within the neck and shoulder region of the body that generates heat, playing a role in maintaining the body’s temperature. Recently it has been suggested that activating brown fat may have a role in treating obesity and diabetes. The problem is that the gold-standard for detecting brown fat uses positron emission tomography (PET) imaging that delivers a large radiation dose and is thus unsuitable for large volunteer studies. Thus, little is known about how many people have brown fat and how active it is. In this project we will explore the use of thermal imaging to detect and quantify brown fat. Thermal images are coloured photographs of the surface of the body where the colour gives the temperature rather than the colour seen by the human eye. Using subjects who have had PET scans for clinical reasons, we plan to study 10 male and 10 female subjects where brown fat was seen on their PET scans and 5 male and 5 female subjects where brown fat was not seen on their PET scans. The colours from the thermal images taken with the participants facing the camera will be compared with corresponding areas from the PET scans that do and do not contain brown fat to investigate how well thermographic images detect the presence of brown fat. Thermal images, like photographic images, are 2-dimensional whereas PET (and other medical) images are often 3-dimensional allowing the internal structures within the body to be seen. In this project we will, for the first time, investigate creating 3-dimensional thermographic images from thermal images taken around the body at the level of the shoulders potentially allowing the volume and activity of any brown fat present to be more accurately determined.
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/WM/0223
Date of REC Opinion
25 Nov 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion