Application of Infrared Thermography as a Diagnostic Tool of Knee Osteoarthritis

Abstract

This paper aimed to study the feasibility of application of infrared thermography to detect osteoarthritis of the knee and to compare the distribution of skin temperature between participants with osteoarthritis and those without pathology. All tests were conducted at LACM (Laboratory of Mechanical Stresses Analysis) and the gymnasium of the University of Reims Champagne Ardennes. IR thermography was performed using an IR camera. Ten participants with knee osteoarthritis and 12 reference healthy participants without OA participated in this study. Questionnaires were also used. The participants with osteoarthritis of the knee were selected on clinical examination and a series of radiographs. The level of pain was recorded by using a simple verbal scale (0-4). Infrared thermography reveals relevant disease by highlighting asymmetrical behavior in thermal color maps of both knees. Moreover, a linear evolution of skin temperature in the knee area versus time has been found whatever the participant group is in the first stage following a given effort. Results clearly show that the temperature can be regarded as a key parameter for evaluating pain. Thermal images of the knee were taken with an infrared camera. The study shows that with the advantage of being noninvasive and easily repeatable, IRT appears to be a useful tool to detect quantifiable patterns of surface temperatures and predict the singular thermal behavior of this pathology. It also seems that this non-intrusive technique enables to detect the early clinical manifestations of knee OA.

Cutaneous temperature and pressure pain threshold in individuals with knee osteoarthritis

“…However, the author of this study evaluated pain by questionnaires (Knee Pain Scale and WOMAC pain subscale) [17]. As the mechanisms of pain in OA are still not fully established and understood [3,4], precise methods such as ther mography and the objective evaluation of pain through pressure pain thresholds (a technique already employed by previous studies) [18,19] can bring information about the relationship between pain and cutaneous tempera ture in this disease. Although thermography is a reli able diagnostic tool to detect quantifiable cutaneous temperature patterns in patients with OA [18], a recent study highlights the fact that current scientific literature is still scarce about the employment of this technique in OA [19].…”

A review of the effectiveness of thermal infrared imaging in the diagnosis and monitoring of knee diseases

“…Taking into account the significant values of sensitivity and specificity the method seems to have great potential for knee osteoarthritis screening. Arfaoui et al [23] investigated the correlation between knee skin temperature and the pain intensity among patients with osteoarthritis (10 patients with unilateral knee osteoarthritis) and without pathology (12 patients). TII of the right and left knees was performed to record skin temperature with CEDIP Titanium HD560M IR camera in the (3.5-5) lm wavelength range.…”

Automatic Knee Injury Identification through Thermal Image Processing and Convolutional Neural Networks

“…For example, Fokam and Lehmann [26] mentioned that IRT is a reliable tool for pain assessment in inflammatory arthritis due to the correlation between skin temperature and arthritis pain. Likewise, other studies have found an association between the temperature of the patellar region (i.e., a sign of inflammation) and the severity of osteoarthrosis in the knee [27,28]. Based on this assumption, Jin et al [29] proposed an automatic analysis method for thermographic images of the knee (specifically in the center of the patella) for osteoarthrosis screening based on a Support Vector Machine.…”