Infrared camera assessment of skin surface temperature - Effect of emissivity

Infrared thermoimaging is one of the options for object temperature analysis. Infrared thermoimaging is unique due to the non-contact principle of measurement. So it is often used in medicine and for scientific experimental measurements. The presented work aims to determine whether the measurement results could be influenced by topical treatment of the hand surface by various substances. The authors attempted to determine whether the emissivity can be neglected or not in situations of topical application of substances such as ultrasound gel, ointment, disinfection, etc. The results of experiments showed that the value of surface temperature is more or less distorted by the topically applied substance. Our findings demonstrate the effect of emissivity of applied substances on resulting temperature and showed the necessity to integrate the emissivity into calculation of the final surface temperature. Infrared thermoimaging can be an appropriate method for determining the temperature of organisms, if this is understood as the surface temperature, and the surrounding environment and its temperature is taken into account. (C) 2012 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.