Sensor Monitoring of Thermal and Vascular Changes During Neoadjuvant Treatment

The physiological impact of neoadjuvant therapy on vascular and thermal responses in breast cancer patients remains poorly understood, despite its clinical relevance for predicting treatment outcomes and managing therapy-related side effects. Sensor-based monitoring technologies, such as thermography and Doppler ultrasound, provide non-invasive approaches to assess circulatory and thermal changes, potentially serving as predictive biomarkers of therapeutic efficacy. This study aimed to evaluate vascular impairment and correlate circulatory alterations with skin surface temperature in women undergoing neoadjuvant therapy for breast cancer. A total of 38 women were enrolled and distributed into two groups: patients receiving eight cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and healthy controls. Thermographic imaging was employed to measure upper-limb surface temperature, while Doppler ultrasound assessed arterial and venous blood flow in the cubital fossa. Paired Student's t-tests compared experimental moments (C1, C5, C8), with normality assessed from difference scores (Δ) and results expressed as mean differences with 95% CIs (p < 0.05, two-tailed). Associations between surface temperature and arterial blood flow were examined using simple linear regression (R², F-statistic, β, p-values). Analyses were performed in SPSS 20.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Significant increases in surface temperature (p < 0.001) and blood flow velocity (p < 0.004) were observed in patients compared with controls prior to therapy, suggesting pre-existing vascular and thermal dysregulation. Neoadjuvant therapy significantly altered thermal and vascular dynamics, reinforcing the utility of sensor-based monitoring to capture subtle physiological responses during treatment.