1. In medicine, a technique wherein an infrared camera is used to photographically portray the surface temperatures of the body, based on the self-emanating infrared radiation; sometimes employed as a means of diagnosing underlying pathologic processes, such as breast tumors.
2. The technique for making a thermogram or an image, or record, of the heat radiating from the body.
3. A procedure for sensing and recording on film the hot and cold areas of the body by means of an infrared detector that reacts to blood flow and produces images that reveal sites of abnormal tissue growth.

Disease conditions which show increased or decreased blood flow that presents thermographic patterns which can be distinguished from those of normal areas.