Preliminary results of severity of illness measures of rheumatoid arthritis using infrared imaging

For the first phase of a large project, we used an infrared imaging camera (thermograph) to obtain accurate measurements of body temperature in joints of twelve human normal subjects (control group) and for thirteen patients who had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by a rheumatologist. The ultimate goal is to create a low cost effective method to diagnose early synovitis. Temperature measurements of hands were analyzed with first order statistics. Results show significant temperature differences between control subjects and patients for every joint and hand portion measured. Future work will complete the analysis of knees, elbows, ankles, combine infrared (IR) imaging and intra-optical (IO) imaging, and incorporate feature extraction and classification approaches to stratify patients into severity of illness prior to, and after receiving treatment.