Why Does My Doctor Insist on a Mammogram Instead of a Thermogram?

Let’s go back to the basics of thermography to understand why it isn’t more widely accepted in the U.S.—and why most doctors simply don’t know much about it.

The story begins in the 1970s with a large study called the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project (BCDDP), jointly run by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Between 1973 and 1980, the BCDDP screened over 283,000 women across 29 centers in 27 U.S. cities. The goal was to evaluate different screening methods for early breast cancer detection.

Unfortunately, the thermography portion of that study was deeply flawed. Instead of using trained thermographers, the project assigned radiologists—professionals skilled in X-ray imaging but unfamiliar with thermal imaging—to perform and interpret thermograms.

As a result:

1. The imaging was performed incorrectly, and

2. The results were misinterpreted.

Because the thermography arm was so poorly executed, it was quickly dismissed. The researchers abandoned thermography and focused their attention on mammography and ultrasound.

The fallout from that decision has lasted decades. Thermography’s exclusion was misinterpreted by the medical community as evidence that it “doesn’t work.” Doctors have since repeated that thermography “was studied and found inadequate,” without realizing the study design itself was the real problem.

The truth is that thermography never had a fair evaluation. It wasn’t that thermography failed—it was that the methodology did.

Today, with advances in high-resolution digital thermal cameras, temperature-controlled environments, and board-certified medical thermologists, thermography deserves to be re-studied alongside mammography—not as a replacement, but as a valuable adjunct screening tool that looks at physiology, not anatomy.

It’s time for the conversation to move forward.