Cooling Agents' Effect Monitoring When Applied to Skin of Healthy Human Subjects

Abstract

There are cooling products available for relieving the pain of minor sports injuries, in muscles, tendons, joints, strains, sprains and knocks. These products are based on ice, gel and cold patches. In order to quantify objectively the effect of each type of those products thermal imaging was used. This monitoring method is suitable to quantify quickly large regions of interest in skin areas over time through the thermal radiation perceived by thermal camera sensors. All recorded images were taken in a controlled environment and following a standard capture protocol in terms of subject, equipment and examination room preparation and procedure of conduction the examination. Two experiments were performed. The obtained results demonstrate that quantitative thermal imaging is a simple and objective tool for evaluating topical cooling treatments. However, it is important to assess the emissivity of any applied substance, which could have a significant effect on temperature measurement by remote sensing.