New JCR paper “Infrared Thermography as a Support Tool for Screening and Early Diagnosis in Emergencies”

New JCR paper “Infrared Thermography as a Support Tool for Screening and Early Diagnosis in Emergencies”

02/12/2015 News

It has been recently published a in the Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics (current Impact JCR = 0.64) the work “Infrared Thermography as a Support Tool for Screening and Early Diagnosis in Emergencies”, which is the result of the cooperation between the research group TermoINEF and the prestigious CEMTRO Clinic.

The first author of the work is Prof. Manuel Sillero Quintana, responsible of the Analysis of the Physical Activity and Sport Laboratory of the UPM, the Thermography Unit of INEF Madrid and Director of the TermoINEF Group.

The co-authors of the CEMTRO Clinic are world-renowned orthopedic surgeon (Pedro Guillén), the responsible for research and scientific communication of the clinic (Tomás Fernandez) and the responsible of the Emrgency Unit of the Hospital (Maria Dolores Pérez).

The rest of the coauthors (Ismael Fernandez Cuevas, Pedro Gomez Carmona and Javier Arnáiz Lastras) are also members of the ThermoHuman team and belongs to the TermoINEF group leaded by Manuel Sillero.

This study is focused on the capacity of infrared thermography (IRT) to discriminate injuries and to evaluate its applicability in emergency trauma scenarios. The sample consisted of 201 patients in the Emergency Unit at the CEMTRO clinic in Madrid and provide the reader with average and maximal skin temperatures (T-sk) from the injured and uninjured region of interest (ROI) of patients of the CEMTRO Clinic Emergency Unit.

General Tsk differences between the injured and the uninjured areas (T sk) were significant for both the average (ΔT sk = +0.5 °C) and maximum (T sk = +0.6 °C) temperatures. Those values may be considered as reference values to decide about the existence of an trauma injury and agree with the thresholds of asymmetry found in previous studies.

Reference values arranged by injured ROI, type of injury, medical diagnosis of the practitioner and evolution time of the injury are also provided and show that IRT has a good specificity for detecting temperature asymmetries on injured areas.

The influence of the usage of ice and anti-inflammatory creams on the ΔT sk results is also analysed using some of the excluded cases from the general study.

The results of this article indicate that, when a high resolution infrared imager is used and an appropriate protocol is followed, IRT can be a good support tool, providing practitioners with additional information to correctly identify a sport injury.

REFERENCE: Sillero-Quintana, Manuel; Fernández-Jaén, Tomás; Fernández-Cuevas, Ismael; Gómez-Carmona, Pedro M.; Arnaiz-Lastras, Javier; Pérez, María-Dolores; Guillén, Pedro. “Infrared Thermography as a Support Tool for Screening and Early Diagnosis in Emergencies”. Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics, Volume 5, Number 6, November 2015, pp. 1223-1228(6)

Europa Thermohuman ThermoHuman has had the support of the Funds of the European Union and the Community of Madrid through the Operational Programme on Youth Employment. Likewise, ThermoHuman within the framework of the Export Initiation Program of ICEX NEXT, had the support of ICEX and the co-financing of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

CDTI Thermohuman has received funding from the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), in participation with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), for the R+D activities involved in creating a new tool, based on thermography, for the prediction and prevention of rheumatoid arthritis. See project detail.

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