Background:

Currently, Type 2 diabetes can be diagnosed by testing a person’s blood for glucose levels. There are several blood glucose tests that may be used, including fasting plasma glucose (FPG), random capillary glucose (RCG) and oral glucose tolerance (OGTT) tests. The OGTT has been considered the standard test. The OGTT test involves someone fasting overnight before blood is taken the next morning from a vein in their arm. HbA1c tests reflect the average level of glucose in the blood over a period of a few months and do not require fasting. They can be conducted on either blood taken from a vein in the arm or, in some cases, a drop of blood from a finger-prick. Because blood glucose or HbA1c tests involve drawing blood and/or fasting, they may be considered inconvenient for mass screening for type 2 diabetes. Thermography, which combines a high degree of accuracy with complete safety, meets the need. Thermography involves the detection of heat energy by an infrared-sensitive device, with subsequent conversion to electrical energy, amplification, and a suitable means of display. Our invention is based on the principle of using the temperature distribution observed in the body to measure the parameters indicating the structural and functional characteristics of the vascular metabolism.

Justification:    The functioning of the vital organs is associated with metabolic heat, which is transferred to the skin surface by the circulating blood. As the heat emitted from the skin, which has an emissivity of 0.98 is related to blood flow. Measurement of the heat emission gives an indicative measure of blood flow. Any dysfunction, namely atherosclerosis that occurs in blood vessels causes the heat distribution observed to differ from the heat distribution of the skin observed under healthy conditions. Vascular dysfunction in a person creates vascular complications, such as endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis over time. These vascular impairments are becoming prominent in subjects who are developing these chronic conditions or existing patients. Our invention uses biomarkers associated with vascular structure and functions measured from thermal imaging for assessing vascular health. This vascular health provides an early indication of the development of diabetes and hypertension.