Original ArticleThermal Imaging to Assess Age-Related Changes of Skin Temperature within the Supraclavicular Region Co-Locating with Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Children
Section snippets
Methods
All studies were undertaken in healthy volunteers who were at least 1 hour postprandial; had remained sedentary during this period; had not consumed any caffeine, drugs, or alcohol; and were maintained in a room of constant temperature (19°-21°C). Informed written consent was obtained from all participants and/or their parent/carer, in the case of children. The study was performed with local institutional ethics committee approval.
Each subject was in a relaxed “steady-state” within a familiar
Results
The time course of the thermal response to placing 1 hand in cold water was similar for all subjects and peaked within 5 minutes of the challenge (Figure 1, B). The anatomic site in which the increase in temperature was recorded is shown in Figures 2 and 3, indicating that the hottest site measured by thermal imaging was similar to that previously established to be BAT on PET/CT.16 Furthermore, Figure 3 demonstrates the position of this region in relation to the visible surface anatomy. The
Discussion
We have demonstrated a consistent, and highly localized, increase in local temperature within the supraclavicular region that directly corresponds to the main site of BAT, previously established from PET/CT scans and biopsy studies,1, 2, 3, 14 although this remains to be correlated directly with tissue biopsy and simultaneous PET/CT. The thermogenic response in this region, indicative of nonshivering thermogenesis, occurred rapidly (ie, within 5 minutes of any thermal challenge), which is in
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2021, Journal of Thermal BiologyCitation Excerpt :Current studies report that infrared thermography has already been found to correlate well with PET-CT after cold exposure changes in adults (Jang et al., 2014; Law et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2011; Van der Lans et al., 2016). Previous studies with children showed a reproducible and specific warming of the SCV region following cold stimulus, which corresponds to active BAT (Malpique et al., 2019; Robinson et al., 2017; Symonds et al., 2012). The non-contact, noninvasive, non-irradiating nature of infrared thermography makes it suitable for use in research to measure and characterize BAT.
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2021, Current Research in PhysiologyCitation Excerpt :The analyser was then required to process the data using a short succession of keystrokes to run a custom-built macro. The macro ranked the cells from warmest to coolest and then identified the output required (Symonds et al., 2012), namely 95th percentile (Law et al., 2018c). The analysers than saved the file output as a new file.
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2019, Journal of PediatricsCitation Excerpt :The thermal image was displayed on a graphical user interface, allowing identification of 5 points representing the apices of the supraclavicular region as defined elsewhere in this article. The supraclavicular region temperature was calculated as the 95th percentile temperature value of the supraclavicular region of interest.15,29,31 To determine the baseline temperature of the skin not overlying BAT, a region away from the proximity of supraclavicular BAT visible in all children's thermograms was chosen as a comparator.
Funded in part by the Nottingham University Hospital's Charity. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.