**3. Comparison with mammography**

Most common methods used for cancer screening today is clinical examination, mammog‐ raphy and ultrasound. Among them, mammography is considered as a gold standard for breast cancer screening. It uses X‐rays to screen the breast region and digitizes the density difference in image format. Typically, cancerous tumor has high density compared to sur‐ rounding region and can be easily distinguished from other regions. Studies [5–7] show that it gives a sensitivity of 68% to 88% (or as low as 48% for extremely dense breasts) and specifici‐ ties ranging from 82% to 98%. In addition, it has the following disadvantages:


Thermography overcomes the above issues and enables more people to go for screening. It can work on women of all age groups. It is a non‐contact, non‐invasive modality with passive infrared measurement, which does not involve any radiation, hence a safe screening method. Since the thermal images can essentially be captured from a laptop connected to the thermal camera, it is also extremely privacy aware.

Among other modalities, clinical breast exam can detect tumors only once they are large enough to be palpable and result in many false positives. Effective use of sono‐mammography (ultra‐ sound) for cancer detection requires location of the lump. Hence, ultrasound is best used as a correlation modality. Once a lump is detected either through mammography or thermography or clinical breast examination, ultrasound will be very useful to reconfirm malignancy or not.
