Infrared thermographic investigation on the ocular surface temperature of normal subjects

OBJECTIVE It is understood that the ability to measure ocular temperature accurately will increase understanding of ocular physiology and should be a support in decision-making in classical diagnostic procedures. The use of ocular thermography offers great opportunities for monitoring the temperature of the anterior eye and analyzing the effects of certain pathologies on ocular surface temperature (OST). The aim of the present work is to measure the OST of 220 healthy normal subjects, stratified according to gender and age, in order to obtain a normal temperature distribution to be used as reference values when comparing healthy versus pathological conditions. APPROACH The OST is measured from five regions, located over the whole area of the anterior eye, which correspond to particular anatomic structures, through a semi-automated procedure to post-process the infrared images. The relationship between OST and independent variables (forehead skin temperature, age, gender, level of physical activity, cardiovascular risk factors including sedentary lifestyle and smoking, laboratory temperature, and laboratory humidity) was investigated through linear regression models. MAIN RESULTS The OSTs measured from the five different ocular regions are statistically different (p -value