Infrared Passive Thermography to Identify and Assess Inflammatory Diseases

This paper proposes the use of infrared passive thermography to diagnose inflammatory pathologies affecting skin, muscular/skeletal system and organs. The aim of the paper is to describe the potentialities of this measurement technique as a non-invasive diagnostic tool to be used in biomedical field. Generally inflammation is cause of a significant increase of the local temperature of inflamed tissues and organs. In detail, the increased blood afflux in the inflamed area is responsible of a greater heat exchange, as a consequence the overlying skin layer temperature is significantly higher than the adjacent areas. The effects of this thermodynamic process can be detected by using an infrared thermal camera. Some case studies are reported in the paper to prove the effectiveness of the thermography as a complementary, quantitative and non-invasive clinical assessment tool to diagnose inflammatory diseases.