Exploration of Infrared Thermography as an Alternate Tool for the Detection of Gastric Diseases

Abstract

The electrical impulses, known as electrogastrograms (EGGs), originate from the muscles of the stomach and are due to the physiological activity of the digestive system. The characteristics of these signals can be used to diagnose various human gastrointestinal disorders. Although the recording of EGG signals is a well-recognized diagnostic procedure, acquiring these signals from human subjects is difficult due to movement artifacts, and difficulties in electrode placement, and is also a time-consuming technique. Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-contact and non-invasive technique used to detect various pathologies in humans. In this work, an attempt was made to establish the correlation between the information content (IC) of electrogastrograms and the information content of abdominal thermal images, in both normal and bradygastric subjects using Rényi entropy. The results show a strong correlation between the entropy of EGG signals and abdominal IRT images, in both normal and bradygastric subjects, with a correlation coefficient of 0.95 and 0.92, respectively. Since the information in the EGG signals and IRT images are strongly correlated, IRT can therefore be proposed as a diagnostic technique to replace EGG in the assessment of digestive diseases.