Potential application of thermography (IRT) in animal production and for animal welfare. A case report of working dogs

INTRODUCTION: The authors describe the thermography technique in animal production and in veterinary medicine applications. The thermographic technique lends itself to countless applications in biology, thanks to its characteristics of versatility, lack of invasiveness and high sensitivity. Probably the major limitation to most important aspects for its application in the animal lies in the ease of use and in its extreme sensitivity.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This review provides an overview of the possible applications of the technique of thermo visual inspection, but it is clear that every phenomenon connected to temperature variations can be identified with this technique. Then the operator has to identify the best experimental context to obtain as much information as possible, concerning the physiopathological problems considered. Furthermore, we reported an experimental study about the thermography (IRT) as a noninvasive technique to assess the state of wellbeing in working dogs.RESULTS: The first results showed the relationship between superficial temperatures and scores obtained by the animal during the behavioral test. This result suggests an interesting application of infrared thermography (IRT) to measure the state of wellbeing of animals in a noninvasive way.