Integrating thermal and anatomical imaging for thyroid 3D modeling

Thermal imaging from an infrared camera is valuable in diagnosing thyroid-related disorders by detecting temperature variations. This study presents a methodology, 3D THERMO-SCAN, to visualize 3D models of dysfunctional thyroids of volunteers, integrating thermal and anatomical images. Thermal images were complemented by computed tomography (CT) scans and processed with MIMICS software. Using structure from motion (SfM) and scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithms, dense 3D point clouds were generated and aligned with anatomical models using MeshLab. Comprehensive 3D visualization was achieved through MeVisLab, combining thermal textures with internal anatomical structures. This cost-effective and replicable technique offers significant potential for medical diagnostics.