Using Facial Thermography to Diagnose Nasal Allergies

Filed in archive Allergy: Diagnostics and Treatment , Hay Fever on September 11, 2007

Doctors at Allegheny general hospital can now diagnose if a patient's sinus problems is due to allergies or not, using a tool called facial thermography. Basically, it's just measuring minute temperature changes in the sinus are using a new device called a digital infrared thermography camera.

If you suffer any kind of allergy symptoms at all, you can't feel it, but you do have increased blood flow to your face, especially your sinuses and above the eyebrows.

Patients sit for a few minutes in a 65-degree room, and the camera does the rest by reading minute increases in blood flow and temperature on each side of the sinuses.

"We can give them a cold virus or an allergen challenge in the nose and watch over a period of hours or even days what's happening with heat and therefore blood flow," said Skoner.

The greater the blood flow, the greater the reaction. It's a noninvasive way to monitor the course of an allergic reaction in real time and can even determine whether someone will respond better to different drugs.

The advantage of this method, according to the doctors, is that it is painless and is less invasive in comparison to other methods they previously used.