Thermovision: a new diagnostic method for orofacial pain?

Infrared thermography can be used to obtain more complete information about a patient's condition. The method can be used in various medical applications for monitoring acute and chronic orofacial pain syndrome. With this diagnostic method, thermal differences in the examined region are usually compared to the same reference region on the opposite side of the body.

Infrared quantitative thermography is a non-invasive method for contactless monitoring of dynamic thermal fields on a surface, or in this case, the human body. This method is based on detection of infrared radiation, which is naturally emitted from the surface of the body. In a pilot project with a patient having orofacial pain, changes before and after repetitive transcranial magnetic brain stimulation treatment were assessed.

First-day measurements found significantly higher maximum, minimum, and average temperatures, before and after therapy, in the area where the patient subjectively reported pain. The fifth and final measurements, before and after therapy, found only a slight elevation of the maximum temperature of the assessed regions, relative to the same regions on the opposite side of the face.

During the measurements on the fifth day, a thermal difference greater than 0.4°C was only observed relative to the minimum temperatures associated with the regions of self-reported pain before and after therapy. For validation of the effects, this method will need to be tested using a randomized, double-blind study with a larger number of patients.