Statistical Study on Human Temperature Measurement by Infrared Thermography

Abstract

Increased temperature in humans is the symptom of many infectious diseases and it is thus an important diagnostic tool. Infrared temperature measurement methods have been developed and applied over long periods due to their advantage of non-contact and fast measurements. This study deals with a statistical evaluation of the possibilities and limitations of infrared/thermographic human temperature measurement. A short review of the use of infrared temperature measurement in medical applications is provided. Experiments and statistics-based evaluation to confirm the expected accuracy and limits of thermography-based human temperature measurement are introduced. The results presented in this study show that the standard deviation of the thermographic measurement of the eyes maximum temperature was 0.4–0.9 °C and the mean values differences from the armpit measurement were up to 0.5 °C, based on the used IR camera, even though near ideal measurement conditions and permanent blackbody correction were used. It was also shown that a certain number of outliers must be assumed in such measurements. Extended analyses including simulations of true negative/false positive, sensitivity/specificity and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves are presented. The statistical evaluation as well as the extended analyses show that maximum eyes temperature is more relevant than a forehead temperature examination.