Varicose veins

De La Librairie Thermographique

Varicose veins in thermography

Calf is the back portion of the lower leg into the human body. The muscles within the calf correspond to the posterior compartment of the leg. The two largest muscles within this compartment are known together as the calf muscle and attach to the heel via the Achilles tendon. Several other, smaller muscles attach to the knee, the ankle, and via long tendons to the toes.[1]

Can be very muscular, calf plays an essential role in walking because the contraction of his muscles will be used to pump the blood stream.

Once the calf was seen in some cultures as a sign of strength to the point that some were adding padding to be better perceived; ironically, it is actually correlated that having thin calves could mean to health problems in old age on malnutrition and carotid plaques (part of arteriosclerosis) [2].


One of the classic calf ailments are varicosity (small intradermal dilations under 3 mm) but may be the beginnings of much more troublesome varicose up even painful phlebitis, medical world have not the same approach regarding the location as for Anglo-Saxon world and America varicosity is mitigated into varicose veins but in continental Europe they can be separated as varicosity is considered as mild.

Diagnosis is currently done primarily by Doppler ultrasound (ultrasonography) but thermography allows its visualization even though it is mainly useful for darker skin where direct visualization is difficult or delayed by the less transparency of the skin.

Thermographie d'un mollet avec varicosités

Upper her, are calves suffering of simple varicosities but can be a warning signal for a later varicose veins evolution. Observe here that reverse b&w palette is an effective benefit for a good reading.

Here is now a case of varicose veins compared to the previous spider veins case and on the right a phlebitis state:

Thermography of a calf with varicose ceins[3] Thermal infrared imagery of varicosity Thermography of a phelibtis in lower leg[4]

Varicose veins upper ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Varicosities are upper -------------------------------------------------------------------------- phlebitis upper

Français:Varicose


Sources:

  1. Calf, human anatomy, Wikipedia
  2. / pubmed / 18703804 Calf circumference is inversely associated with carotid plaques by NCBI
  3. ALAVA INGENIEROS
  4. Thermografia by José Valdez]
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