NCT07095738

Textural Analysis and Effect of ROI Size on Infrared Thermography in Athletes With Patellar Tendinopathy

Textural Analysis and Effect of ROI Size on Infrared Thermography in Athletes With Patellar Tendinopathy. A Cross-sectional Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 54 (actual)
• Sponsor: Cardenal Herrera University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Patellar tendinopathy (PT) is a common knee disorder, particularly among elite athletes, with a reported prevalence of approximately 14.2%. Athletes affected by PT may experience persistent pain, functional impairment, reduced quality of life, decreased physical performance, and even premature career termination. Diagnosing PT remains challenging due to the absence of a gold standard diagnostic method. Although imaging techniques such as ultrasonography (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can aid in confirming the diagnosis and assessing severity, MRI is costly and less accessible, and US shows poor correlation with clinical symptoms. Consequently, diagnosis largely relies on clinical examination and medical history. Infrared thermography (IT) has emerged as a potential alternative imaging technique, offering a low-cost, reliable, and non-invasive method to detect thermal asymmetries indicative of underlying pathologies. Technological advancements have enhanced the precision of IT, reducing the thermal asymmetry threshold from 2-3 ºC in the 1970s to 0.5 ºC in current knee assessments. First-order statistics, such as mean gray intensity, and second-order features based on the gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), have been extensively used in medical image analysis, including IT, to quantify structural and textural characteristics. The size of the region of interest (ROI) is also a critical factor in thermal and texture analyses, as it can influence sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy. Given these considerations, the objectives of this study were: (1) to evaluate differences in thermal and GLCM-based textural features between athletes with PT and healthy controls; (2) to compare the diagnostic performance of IT and GLCM features applied to thermographic images; and (3) to identify the most appropriate ROI size for optimal characterization of PT using both thermal and textural analysis.

Conditions

• Patellar Tendinopathy
• Diagnostic Accuracy
• Infrared Thermography

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DIAGNOSTIC_TEST	thermal images (IT)	The IT images were recorded with an OPTRIS PI 450 IRT camera coupled to Optris PI Connect Software (Germany). The IRT camera has a Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference \<40 mK with 38º x 29º FOV, a wide range of temperature from -20°C to +100°C, spectrum range of 7.5-13 μm, focal plane array sensor size of 382 × 288 pixels, emissivity set at 0.98 and a measurement uncertainty of ± 2% of the overall temperature reading. The size of the capture frame will be 55.4 × 40.63 cm (1.5 mm/px).

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-08-01
• Primary completion: 2025-08-20
• Completion: 2025-09-19
• First posted: 2025-07-31
• Last updated: 2025-09-24

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Spain