Table 1.
Patient characteristics.
Fig 1.
Illustration of performed measurements.
Left (thermographic data): Supraclavicular ROIs were of triangular shape and placed within the lateral neck triangle that is formed by the clavicle, the sternocleidomastoid muscle and the lateral neck contour. Jugular and presternal ROIs were circular. Right (CT data): As a measure for SCAT thickness of the supraclavicular regions, the minimal distance between the vascular compartment of the neck and the skin surface was measured (double arrow). Asterisks mark the left clavicle and the trachea.
Fig 2.
Mean (left) and maximum (middle) skin temperature of the supraclavicular regions in patients without and with active brown adipose tissue.
Mean and maximum supraclavicular skin temperatures were significantly different between patients with and without active BAT (* indicates statistically significant differences). No significant difference was observed between BAT-positive and BAT-negative patients when mean supraclavicular skin temperature was normalized relative to the jugular skin temperature (right).
Fig 3.
Correlation of skin temperatures of the supraclavicular, the presternal and the jugular regions with body mass index.
Red dots mark patients with activated BAT in FDG-PET. r denotes Pearson’s correlation coefficients.
Fig 4.
Correlation between supraclavicular skin temperature and SCAT thickness (top) and between BMI and supraclavicular SCAT thickness (bottom).
r denotes Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
Fig 5.
Examples illustrating the study results.
Thermographic images (top) and PET images (bottom) of patients without (left and right) and a patient with (middle) metabolically active BAT. Patients with low BMI (left and middle) display relatively high skin temperatures of the supraclavicular regions (arrows) independent of the presence of activated BAT.