Biothermal radiation dynamics

All living things produce heat as a byproduct of metabolism. This

heat is considerable, about 75 watts or approximately one-tenth of
horsepower for a resting human, which comes out to a daily basal
heat energy output of 1.8 kilowatt-hours or about 1500 Calories.15
To experience a heat output of about 75 watts, put your dry hand
on the glass bulb of a cool 75-watt incandescent light bulb and
turn it on. In about 10 seconds, the bulb will become too hot to
touch. This amount of heat must be dissipated constantly into
the surroundings to maintain a normal body temperature. An
unclothed non-obese resting human is in temperature balance
when the surrounding air is between 27°C and 28°C (80.6°F and
82.4°F) at a relative humidity of about 70%, assuming no drafts or
breezes. This is about 10°C (18°F) below the human core tempera-
ture, creating a thermal gradient that allows controlled shedding
of metabolic heat.16 Warmer ambient temperatures may feel too
hot, while cooler temperatures feel too cool.
The infrared emissivity of human skin is just under 1.0 (actu-
ally 0.98), making it a near-perfect emitter/absorber of 10-μm
infrared radiation at room temperature.17 Skin emissivity is prac-
tically constant in the infrared range from 7 to 14 μm, measur-
ing 0.977 ± 0.007 in a definitive study.18 The very low standard
deviation (±0.007) shows that individual skin variability is mini-
mal. Skin color, whether white, brown, black, red, yellow, or even
burnt, has no effect on human infrared emissivity.19 It is because
of this extremely high and uniform emissivity that measurements
of infrared radiation emanating from the human body’s surface
can be converted into accurate skin temperature values.
Setting an infrared imager to emissivity values other than
0.98 may affect the accuracy of the absolute and differential tem-
perature readings by changing the thermal gain of the imager as
referenced to the background temperature setting. As shown in
the formula (Figure 2.3(a)), background temperature correction
can have the following effects: cooler body parts with surface
temperatures close to the background temperature setting will
show little error in reported surface temperature readings, even
with emissivity settings as low as 0.8. Temperatures over warm
skin surfaces, however, will be reported considerably warmer
than actual due to the increased gain if the emissivity is set lower
than 0.96. Conversely, reported temperatures of warm surfaces
will be lower than actual if the emissivity is set to 0.99 or 1.0.
Thermographers are advised to check and adjust both the imag-
er’s emissivity and background temperature settings to obtain the
most accurate absolute and differential thermal measurements.
Incorrect emissivity and background temperature settings may
also cause errors when checking the calibration of an imager.
Detected temperatures are significantly affected by the imaging
distance; objects warmer than the background appear cooler, and
cooler objects than background appear warmer with increasing
imaging distance. 21 This is due to the lens and internal structures
of an imager scattering an average of the incoming radiation onto
the sensor leaflets; more background area radiation is scattered
onto the image at increasing target distances. 22 Distance effects
may be important in studies involving absolute temperature mea-
surements such as fever detection. Differential temperature mea-
surements on the body should not be significantly affected by this
distance effect because the two measurements will be altered by
about the same amount.