ICI-THROUGH, which was undertaken with the support of the Marie Curie programme, focused its research on obesity. Until now, practitioners wanting to measure the activity of brown adipose tissue had to use positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging. This is a highly invasive, harmful (due to high radiation levels) and expensive technique which is almost exclusively used for cancer detection and requires well-equipped facilities. ICI-THROUGH delivers the best of both worlds though the association of two academic and two industrial partners. By working together, they created a non-invasive, practical and inexpensive method to estimate human brown adipose tissue activity. They also managed to combine: PET/CT imaging; thermal video and image analysis, along with and heat and mass transfer models. By doing so the team was able to quantify the heat produced by brown adipose tissue which, in turn, provides extremely valuable information on how it consumes energy.