Observational studyEuropean journal of clinical investigation2021
Diagnostic accuracy of infrared thermal imaging for detecting COVID-19 infection in minimally symptomatic patients.
Observational study in European journal of clinical investigation, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the Health and Functionality of the Microcirculation Using Thermal Imaging.Journal of biophotonics · 2026Review
- Assessing detector stability and image quality of thermal cameras on smartphones for medical applications: a comparative study.Medical & biological engineering & computing · 2025Article
- Article
- Best Practices for Body Temperature Measurement with Infrared Thermography: External Factors Affecting Accuracy.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Assessment of Pain and Inflammation in Domestic Animals Using Infrared Thermography: A Narrative Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Infrared image method for possible COVID-19 detection through febrile and subfebrile people screening.Journal of thermal biology · 2023Article
- Is diagnostic performance of SARS-CoV-2 detection dogs reduced -due to virus variation- over the time?Applied animal behaviour science · 2023Article
- Potential of using facial thermal imaging in patient triage of flu-like syndrome during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.PloS one · 2023Article
- Article
- Use of Infrared Thermal Imaging for Assessing Acute Inflammatory Changes: A Case Series.Cureus · 2022Article
- Smartphone apps in the COVID-19 pandemic.Nature biotechnology · 2022Review
- Low-cost thermal imaging with machine learning for non-invasive diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of pneumonia.Infrared physics & technology · 2022Article
- Physician perceptions of surveillance: Wearables, Apps, and Chatbots for COVID-19.Digital medicine · 2022Article
- COVID-19 classification using thermal images.Journal of biomedical optics · 2022Article
- Is It Useful to Determine the Temperature of Children for COVID-19 Screening in the Dental Setting?Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Infrared Thermography in Wound Care, Surgery, and Sports Medicine: A Review.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Review
- Infrared Thermography for Measuring Elevated Body Temperature: Clinical Accuracy, Calibration, and Evaluation.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Dynamic Variations in Infrared Skin Temperature of Weaned Pigs Experimentally Inoculated with the African Swine Fever Virus: A Pilot Study.Veterinary sciences · 2021Article
- An Overview of Thermal Infrared Imaging-Based Screenings during Pandemic Emergencies.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Diagnostic accuracy of infrared thermal imaging for detecting COVID-19 infection in minimally symptomatic patients.European journal of clinical investigation · 2021Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionDespite being widely used as a screening tool, a rigorous scientific evaluation of infrared thermography for the diagnosis of minimally symptomatic patients suspected of having COVID-19 infection has not been performed.
methodsA consecutive sample of 60 adult individuals with a history of close contact with COVID-19 infected individuals and mild respiratory symptoms for less than 7 days and 20 confirmed COVID-19 negative healthy volunteers were enrolled in the study. Infrared thermograms of the face were obtained with a mobile camera, and RT-PCR was used as the reference standard test to diagnose COVID-19 infection. Temperature values and distribution of the face of healthy volunteers and patients with and without COVID-19 infection were then compared.
resultsThirty-four patients had an RT-PCR confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 and 26 had negative test results. The temperature asymmetry between the lacrimal caruncles and the forehead was significantly higher in COVID-19 positive individuals. Through a random forest analysis, a cut-off value of 0.55°C was found to discriminate with an 82% accuracy between patients with and without COVID-19 confirmed infection.
conclusionsAmong adults with a history of COVID-19 exposure and mild respiratory symptoms, a temperature asymmetry of ≥ 0.55°C between the lacrimal caruncle and the forehead is highly suggestive of COVID-19 infection. This finding questions the widespread use of the measurement of absolute temperature values of the forehead as a COVID-19 screening tool.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.