A Review on Inflammatory Pain Detection in Human Body through Infrared Image Analysis Shawli Bardhan 1 , Mrinal Kanti Bhowmik 1 , Satyabrata Nath 2 , Debotosh Bhattacharjee 3 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Tripura University (A Central University), Suryamaninagar-799022, Tripura 2 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) Department, Agartala Government Medical College (AGMC), Agartala-799006 3 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal shawli.999@gmail.com, mkb_cse@yahoo.co.in, debotosh@ieee.org line 4-e-mail address if desi Abstract— Temperature difference in the skin surface reflects the abnormality present in the human body. Considering the phenomenon, detection and forecasting the change of temperature is the principal objective of using Medical Infrared Thermography (MIT) as a diagnostic tool for inflammatory pain diseases. Medical Infrared Thermography (MIT) is a non- invasive, non-contact and fast imaging technique that record and monitor the flow of body temperature by receiving the infrared emitted from the skin surface. Based on the standardization of thermogram acquisition and processing techniques and by the adoption of advanced infrared cameras, presently it is feasible to detect the minor temperature difference of the skin surface in the high-resolution infrared images. Recently, the research on inflammatory pain detection using medical infrared thermography concentrated on the area of temperature and statistical analysis based automated detection of abnormality from the thermograms. The paper introduces a significant review focusing on the area of different inflammatory pain detection using infrared thermography along with the environmental condition, protocol selection, and acquisition system specification in summarized tabular format. Based on the rigorous study of the publications in the area of inflammatory pain thermography, the paper also explores the area of thermogram processing and analysis of pain in a review work format. Keywords—Thermography; infrared; pain; inflammation I. INTRODUCTION Human body distribution of temperature is widely affected by pathological abnormalities. Hence the recording of inflammation of the skin surface related with the core temperature distribution can provide essential information regarding the underlying physiological activities. The dissipation of inflammation from the skin surface is radiating in nature and lies in the infrared spectrum of light [1]. The spectrum range of inflammation makes the infrared detector suitable for recording and analysis of the thermoregulatory distribution of the skin. Medical Infrared Thermography is a non-invasive imaging technique that can detect abnormality by allocating and quantifying the inflammatory changes in the skin surface related to the temperature distribution. Since 1987, it has been accepted as a diagnostic imaging technique by the American Medical Association Council and also recently approved by American Academy of Medical Infrared Imaging for medical imaging [2]. The detection method of the Medical Infrared Thermography is primarily based on the evaluation of temperature distribution among contralateral parts of the body. In case of healthy subjects the difference in temperature distribution is not higher than 0.5-degree Celsius [3]. Starting from the last eighties, detection of pain using thermal imaging was examined in many past investigations. Most of the investigations provide statistical quantification techniques for the abnormality analysis. Based on the study of the most relevant works published in the past, the paper represents a review work on pain detection using Medical Infrared Thermography along with the survey of acquisition conditions. In the rest of the paper, the section II describes some inflammatory pains that can be detected using Medical Infrared thermography. Section III contains the methodological review work related to the pain thermography. The section IV and V represent the review work related to protocol selection for thermogram acquisition, thermal camera specification and disease related thermogram description in descriptive and tabular format. Finally the conclusion along with future work is made in section VI followed by the acknowledgement and the reference part. II. MEDICAL INFRARED THERMOGRAPHY IN INFLAMMATORY PAIN DETECTION Temperature distribution analysis and early detection of abnormality due to inflammatory pain are recognizable by Medical Infrared Thermography. Thermographic detections are compared with the clinical observations and tests for possible confirmations. Although the technique heavily depends on the surrounding and background environment, there are a number of reasons for accepting the technique for diagnosis of inflammatory pain. In general, inflammation is related to pain diseases like arthritis, frozen shoulder, Prolapse Intervertebral Disc (PIVD), spondylosis, etc.which are not defence system begins attacking the healthy tissues instead of detected by clinical observations. In case of arthritis, the immune system of the body become affected and the body foreign substances, and it causes inflammation, pain and joint damage. The presence of additional inflammation due to arthritis can be detected using medical infrared thermography. 978-1-4673-6708-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE