Measuring heat signatures in the neck is an effective way to measure brown fat compared to PET/CT

What is it about?

PET/CT has been used to measure brown fat activity but has the problem of requiring high levels of radiation so cannot be ethically used on large numbers of healthy volunteers or in groups such as children. We have developed a way of measuring brown fat using infrared thermgraphy which looks at the heat signature of the neck. This paper shows that the results from infrared thermography are similar to those from PET-CT.

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Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash

Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Brown fat is of interest because it burns a lot of calories to produce heat and therefore may help with weight management, but also with improving glucose and fat levels in the blood. However, it's difficult to measure so new ways of measuring it are needed and infrared thermography is non-invasive, cheap and does not have any associated radiation.