Thermography and breast screening: what regulators and health bodies say

Searching for breast screening options brings up thermography, often described as painless and radiation free. This page sets out what breast thermography is, what the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says about it, what other authorities say, and how to read claims you may meet elsewhere. It does not recommend any test.

Screening policy differs between countries and between people, and your own doctor or screening service decides what applies to you. Guidance can change, so dates are given for each source.

What breast thermography is

Thermography uses an infrared camera to record the heat given off by the body. The Canadian Cancer Society defines it as a procedure that records the heat produced by different parts of the body, with an infrared camera measuring and displaying heat patterns, and calls the resulting picture a thermogram.11Canadian Cancer Society: thermography (glossary) Definition of thermography and thermogram. The FDA describes it as a type of test that shows patterns of heat on or near the surface of the body.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Consumer update dated October 2023.

The reasoning behind it is that tumors may generate more heat than healthy tissue. A 2025 critical review in the journal Cancers describes clinical thermography as measuring skin temperature by recording the infrared radiation the body emits naturally, and explains the idea that malignant tumors generate more heat because of increased blood vessel growth.33Cancers (journal, via PubMed Central): Why Do Radiologists Disown Breast Thermography? Published June 2025; describes how thermography is meant to work. A mammogram, by contrast, is an x-ray image that can show tissue types of different densities, such as masses within the breast.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Image caption contrasting mammogram and thermography.

What the FDA says

The FDA consumer update, dated October 2023, states that mammography is still the most effective primary screening method for detecting breast cancer in its early, most treatable stages. It says some health centers provide information that can mislead patients into believing thermography is a proven alternative, and that the FDA is not aware of any scientific evidence to support those claims.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Consumer update dated October 2023.

On early detection, the update says thermography has not been shown to be effective as a standalone test for breast cancer screening and detecting early-stage breast cancer. It adds that thermography devices have only been cleared by the FDA as an adjunctive tool, meaning for use alongside a primary screening test such as mammography. People who have thermography alone should not be reassured by the findings, it says, because the device was not cleared for use without another method.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Says thermography has not been shown effective standalone and is cleared only as adjunctive.

The FDA also addresses two claims common online: that thermography can find breast cancer years before other methods, and that it improves detection in dense breasts. It says it is not aware of any evidence that supports these claims.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Addresses the claims of years-earlier detection and better detection in dense breasts.

What other bodies say

The Canadian Cancer Society notes that some businesses offer thermography as an alternative or complement to medical imaging such as mammography, and states that thermography has not been shown to be an effective tool for medical imaging for cancer.11Canadian Cancer Society: thermography (glossary) States thermography has not been shown effective for cancer imaging.

The 2025 review in Cancers reports that the Society of Breast Imaging stated in 2012 that it does not support thermography as either a screening tool or an adjunctive diagnostic tool, that a 2017 position paper from the European Society of Breast Imaging and 30 national bodies strongly discouraged thermography as an alternative to mammography, and that Australia's health department advised against it for screening in 2019 for lack of scientific evidence.33Cancers (journal, via PubMed Central): Why Do Radiologists Disown Breast Thermography? Published June 2025; summarizes position statements from several bodies. The review's authors describe the evidence on thermography as poor and contradictory for decades, and its abstract describes thermography as having potential as a complementary tool. That is a research view rather than guidance for patients, and the same article concludes that national health agencies found insufficient evidence to add thermography to screening programs.

For comparison, the guidance for what is recommended comes from other places. The US Preventive Services Task Force, in a recommendation published in April 2024, advises a mammogram every 2 years for women aged 40 to 74, and the National Cancer Institute lists mammography, MRI, ultrasound and exams as the screening tests, without thermography among them.44US Preventive Services Task Force: Breast Cancer Screening Final recommendation statement of April 30, 2024.55National Cancer Institute: Screening for Breast Cancer Page dated August 2025; lists the tests used to screen. The methods overview covers each of these.

How to read claims you may see

A few questions help when you meet a claim about thermography or any other test. Does it say the test replaces mammography, or only that it is used alongside? The FDA's wording about adjunctive use matters here. Does it say "years earlier" or "better for dense breasts"? Those are the specific claims the FDA says it has seen no evidence for. Is the source a regulator, a medical society or a research review, or a business that offers the test?

Painless and radiation free describes how a test feels and what it uses, which is separate from whether it finds cancer. For dense breasts, the page on dense breasts and screening describes the options guidelines discuss, and this page asks whether a better test exists.

Who to ask

Your own doctor or national screening service can say which screening applies to you, and why. The FDA update suggests asking your health care professional about when and how often to be screened, and calling them if you notice a change in either breast such as a lump, thickening, leakage from the nipple or changes in how the nipple looks.22US Food and Drug Administration: Breast Cancer Screening: Thermogram No Substitute for Mammogram Advice to talk with your health care professional and to report breast changes. The main guide explains how screening works.