Thermoregulation and Thermography in Neonatal Physiology and Disease

Abstract

Introduction: Infrared thermal imaging, or thermography, is a technique used to measure body surface temperature in the study of thermoregulation. Researchers are beginning to use this novel methodology to study cancer, peripheral vascular disease, and wound management. Methods: The authors tested the feasibility of using an FLIR SC640 uncooled, infrared camera to measure body temperature in neonates housed in heated, humid incubators. The authors examined thermograms to analyze distributions between central and peripheral body temperature in extremely low birth weight infants. The authors have also used this technology to examine the relationship between body temperature and development of necrotizing enterocolitis in premature infants. Results: Handheld, uncooled, infrared cameras are easy to use and produce high-quality thermograms that can be visualized in grayscale or color palettes to enhance qualitative and quantitative analyses. Conclusion: Future research will benefit from the use of this noninvasive, inexpensive measurement tool. Nurse researchers can use this methodology in adult and infant populations to study temperature differentials present in pathological conditions.

Physiologic Effects of Rhythmical Massage: A Prospective Exploratory Cohort Study

“…4 IRI has been proposed as a noninvasive screening method for detection 5,6 and prognosis determination 7 of breast cancer as well as detection of melanoma. 8 Further applications concern diagnosis and study of thermal instability in premature infants, 9 clinical assessment of peripheral perfusion and tissue viability in diabetes, 10 vascular disorders, 11 and inflammatory processes. 12 Also some movement exercises 13 and therapeutic massage 14 can be associated with changes in skin temperature detectable by IRI.…”

Infrared thermography for detailed registration of thermoregulation in premature infants

“…To avoid and/or register changes in body temperature of premature infants, it is standard to continuously measure skin or rectal body temperature by cable-bound sensors. Color infrared thermography (IRT) is a method to measure skin temperature distribution of mature [3,8] and premature [1,10,12,16,19,20,25] infants.…”

Detection of Necrotizing Enterocolitis in newborns using abdominal thermal signature analysis

“…Thermograms have been used to analyze temperature distributions between central and peripheral body in extremely low birth weight newborns and to examine the relationship between body temperature and development of NEC in premature babies [15]. In other work, statistical feature extraction, infrared temperature profiles of abdomen quadrants were submitted to a pattern classification tool (decision trees) to discriminate between infants with and without NEC [7].…”