Background
Physiology of fetal and neonatal thermoregulation
The case for temperature measurement with thermal imaging
Methods
Search strategy
Inclusion/exclusion criteria
Screening and charting
Analysis
Results
Author(s) | Year | Type of Study | Country | Purpose of the Study | Population | TI Assessment Tool |
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Viitanen & Kivikoski [27] | 1971 | Case series | Finland | To assess the thermographical changes in the temperature of the newborns and the comparison with local skin temperature measurements. | 18 newborns (immediately after delivery) | AGA Thermovision system Model 652 |
Tahti et al. [28] | 1972 | Case series | Finland & Sweden | To record the emitted heat of wide areas of infant’s body and to study the infant’s first reaction to a cold environment. | 16 infants directly after delivery (12 healthy full-term infants of normal weight; 2 healthy premature infants with 1800 g and 2200 g body weight; and 2 asphyxiated babies with 1800 g and 2600 g birth weight) | AGA Thermovision system Model 661 |
Rylander et al. [29] | 1972 | Case series (with 4 groups) | Sweden | To demonstrate if a cold-induced increase in heat radiation appeared over areas where brown fat should be subcutaneously situated. | 43 healthy infants (gestational age 38–44 weeks) checked before the tenth day of life Group 1, n = 19: infants with a birth weight of 2750 g to 3820 g (in environmental temperature of 24 °C) Group 2, n = 10: infants with a birth weight of 3240 g to 4020 g (placed in an incubator) Group 3, n = 7: infants with a birth weight of 1860 g to 2680 g (treated in the same way as Group 2) Group 4, n = 7: infants with a birth weight of 2980 g to 4370 g (in a water bath of 38 °C) | AGA Thermovision system Model 660 |
Perlstein et al. [30] | 1972 | Case series | USA | To investigate if infant age is an important variable to consider in evaluating interscapular skin temperatures in cold-stressed babies. | 14 full-term and premature infants (7 of the infants were less than 24 h and 7 more than 5 days old at the time of examination) | No brand name (thermography system Barnes Engineering Co, with an Indium Antimonite sensor 2–4.4 μm. 4 thermograms per second) |
Bhatia et al. [31] | 1976 | Comparative cohort study (follow up of patients’ group sub-sample) | USA | To investigate if TI can be informative in acute and chronic liver disease, particularly on follow-up basis. | Patients group: 62 infants and children from 3 weeks to 17 years of age Control Group: 32 healthy children from 2 days to 8 years of age (no specification on how many of them were newborns < 28 days of age) Follow-up was performed in 28 of the 62 participants (patients group) | AGA Thermovision system (no model description) |
Pomerance et al. [15] | 1977 | Case series | USA | To determine normal anterior and posterior thermograms of the trunk of a newborn; and to investigate whether deep-lying organs can be detected at the surface. | 37 newborns (age range not specified for whole group). There was one 2-day-old term, one 3-days old term, one 18 days old pre-term, one 19 days old pre-term etc. | Spectrotherm 2000 Thermographic System |
Clark & Stothers [14] | 1980 | Case series | England | To visualise skin temperature distributions in newborns; and to compare temperatures obtained from thermograms (thermal camera) to skin temperatures measured with a thermometer. | 17 newborns 4–13 days old(15 were full-term and 2 were preterm). | AGA Thermovision system Model 680 |
Oya et al. [32] | 1997 | Case series | Japan | To measure the extent of non-shivering thermogenesis (NST) in brown adipose tissue of human newborns receiving routine thermal care and to examine the influence of oxygen levels at birth on the initiation of NST. | 15 healthy full-term newborns (five minutes after birth) | Thermal Video System 3000 ME, Japan Avionics Co. |
Ek et al. [18] | 1999 | Case series | USA | To investigate the changes in heat loss when radiant warmers were removed and returned to premature infants. | 10 premature infants (gestational age 31.4 ± 5.5 weeks), age 15 ± 11.7 days | 600 L infrared imaging radiometer (Inframetrics) |
Adams et al. [19] | 2000 | Case series | USA | To test a new method – infrared thermographic calorimetry – against respiratory indirect calorimetry to measure mean body temperature and calculate heat loss. | 10 preterm infants (34 ± 23 days) | Inframetrics model 525 infrared camera |
Christidis I et al. [17] | 2003 | Case series (with 4 groups) | Austria | To investigate a surface temperature profile in newborns within the first hour after delivery. | 41 newborns (within the first hour after birth) Group 1, n = 19: infants after normal pregnancy, wrapped into cotton immediately after delivery Group 2, n = 15: infants examined by paediatrician under a radiant heater Group 3, n = 4: infants after normal pregnancy who had skin-to-skin contact. Group 4, n = 3: infants after normal pregnancy, recorded before any intervention. | Thermotracer TH 3100 (NEC San-ei Instruments, Japan) |
Saxena & Willital [26] | 2008 | Case series | Austria | To assess the application of TI to identify pathologies in 1 week to 16 year old children. (In newborns with abdominal wall defect) | 285 patients; 18 newborns (> 1 week old) | Talytherm thermal imager (Rank Taylor Hobson Ltd) |
Rice et al. [33] | 2010 | Case series | USA | To measure the abdominal surface temperature in low birth weight newborns, using thermography, and drawing comparisons between abdominal and thoracic surface temperatures in newborns with and without necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). | 13 newborns; 10 newborns had radiographs and were used for comparison. (23–29 gestational weeks; examined during the first month of life) | FLIR SC640 camera |
Herry et al. [25] | 2011 | Case series | Canada | To compare thermograms of the abdomen of healthy newborns and newborns with NEC, to distinguish differences and to investigate if TI is suitable for diagnosing NEC in infants. | 59 newborns (48 were had a gestational age of 28.3 ± 2.4 weeks; 11 were of 26.7 ± 1.8 weeks) | No brand name (Infrared camera, uncooled microbolometer focal plane array, 320 × 420 pixels, thermal and spatial sensitivity of 0.05° at 30 °C and 1.3 mrad) |
Abbas et al. [34] | 2011 | Case series | Germany | To use TI to monitor thermal distributions of neonates within the neonatal intensive care unit. | 7 preterm newborns (gestational age was a mean of 29 weeks, included in the study directly after birth) | VarioCAM hr. head camera (InfraTech GmbH) |
Knobel et al. [8] | 2011 | Case series | USA | To measure body temperature in infants and examine the relationship between body temperature and symptoms of NEC in infants with low birth weights. | 10 low birth newborns (gestational age less than 29 weeks, examined during the first 5 days of life) | FLIR SC640 uncooled infrared camera |
Knobel et al. [35] | 2013 | Case series | USA | To test instrumentation and develop analytic models to use in a larger study to examine developmental trajectories of body temperature and peripheral perfusion from birth in extremely low birth weight (EBLW) infants. | 4 newborns, 4 h of birth (< 29 weeks gestational age) | Not mentioned |
Heimann et al. [36] | 2013 | Case series | Germany | To evaluate skin temperature by using different positions with TI in multiple body areas of preterm infants for detailed information about temperature regulation and distribution. | 10 preterm infants (12–62 days old) | VarioCam hr-Head (InfraTec GmbH, Germany) |
Kurath-Koller et al. [37] | 2015 | Case series | Austria | To evaluate the safety of laser acupuncture in newborn infants by using a thermal camera to analyse changes in thermal distributions. | 20 newborns (23 days old) | FLIR i5 camera |
Knobel-Dail et al. [38] | 2017 | Case series | USA | To explore the utility of TI as a non-invasive method for measuring body temperature in premature infants in an attempt to regionally examine differential temperatures. | Data was collected from 31 infants originally; only 22 had valid thermograms and the first two were used for training (23 to 28 gestational weeks; first 5 days of life) | FLIR SC640 uncooled microbolometer |
Barcat et al. [39] | 2017 | Case series | France | To investigate whether or not skin temperature and vasodilation of the skin affect sleep propensity in neonates. | 29 preterm newborns (9 days old) | B400 FLIR Systems infrared camera |
Regions of interest/investigation | Authors - Studies |
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Body surface (skin) temperature, and temperature distributions (patterns): Forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, earlobe, nape, interscapular area, hand, foot, upper trunk, buttock, thigh, calf, arm, abdomen, back. | Viitanen&Kivikoski (1971); Tahti et al. (1972); Rylander et al. (1972); Perlstein et al. (1972); Bhatia et al. (1976); Pomerance et al. (1977); Clark &Stothers (1980); Ek et al. (1999); Oya et al. (1997); Adams et al. (2000); Christidis et al. (2002); Saxena&Willital (2008); Rice et al. (2010); Herry et al. (2011); Knobel et al. (2011); Abbas et al. (2011); Knobel et al. (2013); Kurath-Koller et al. (2015); Knobel-Dail et al. (2017); Barcat et al. (2017) |
Deep structures/organs: heart, liver and kidneys. | Bhatia et al. (1976); Pomerance et al. (1977) |
Clinical states: Pathologies, abdominal wall defects, NEC, heart failure, liver diseases, kidney dysfunction. | Bhatia et al. (1976; Pomerance et al. (1977); Saxena&Willital (2008); Rice et al. (2010); Herry et al. (2011); Knobel et al. (2011) |
Heat loss | Tahti et al. (1972); Ek et al. (1999); Adams et al. (2000) |
Respiratory monitoring | Adams et al. (2000); Abbas et al. (2011) |
Safety of laser acupuncture | Kurath-Koller et al. (2015) |
Sleep propensity | Barcat L et al. (2017) |