Medical Thermographic Scanner display unit and recording unit , England, c. 1970

Medical thermographic scanner with digital read-out facility, made at Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston, c.1970

A display unit and a recording unit comprise this equipment. The display unit showed a ‘grey scale’ scanned picture of the patient on a cathode ray tube with superimposed contour marks, usually in one degree Celsius intervals. This indicated temperature differences in a range of tissues, including tumours.

The recording unit is a much smaller cathode ray tube. It is viewed by a Polaroid camera operated electronically to give a digital image. It was typically used for breast scanning to identify cancer. This prototype machine was made by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston, England. It was used until the 1980s at the now-closed Middlesex Hospital in central London.