EditorialThe objective of this article is to critically and pragmatically evaluate the pros and cons of Infrared thermography (IRT) as a postmodern prognostic livestock agrotechnology. The IRT detects thermal radiation from objects [1]. This technology offers a noninvasive noncontact management tool for farmers to detect circadian and weekly fluctuations as well as significant short-and long-term changes in skin temperature from different tissues [2][3][4]. Such temperature changes would be considered as an indicator of metabolic alterations in underlying tissues [5,6].The temperature of any surface including body depends closely on blood flow and tissue metabolism rate [1,7]. Therefore, the potential exists to monitor and quantify the physiological and health states of underlying tissues by measuring skin temperature and its circadian, day-to-day, seasonal, and circannual oscillations [8]. The IRT may be utilized to diagnose inflammatory conditions, such as sole abscesses and laminitis in horses and dairy cows [1,3,4,6], hot-iron and freeze branding in cattle [9], whole body physiological state using eye temperature in equine and ruminants [10], and mastitis in dairy cows, sheep and camel [11][12][13][14]. For instance, feet soles suffering from subclinical laminitis appear soft and warm well before other clinical and severe signs (e.g., color changes, lesions, hemorrhages, and ulcers) appear [6]. As such, IRT could potentially be used for early detection and quantification of inflammation. If capable so, IRT may help to early diagnose the many syndromes and diseases in farm animals before their devastating health and economical consequences occur. This would mean a prognostic function for IRT in modern and postmodern livestock agrotechnology. Such a capability would allow interventions to prevent and attenuate unhealthy conditions. However, such solid and consistent applications will yet need to be realized on a global scale, which necessitates considerably more extensive and longitudinal studies.Images of IRT are taken using hand-held portable infrared cameras that are increasingly advancing in shape and function. Cameras must be calibrated to ambient temperature and absorptive conditions on each sampling day. To minimize effects of environmental noises on thermal data, all images must be scanned within the same environmental conditions and at the same distance from the surface of interest. For example, hoof and skin surfaces must be free of debris and humidity before images are taken. Afterwards, images are captured using a fixed control temperature range according to the range of temperature in the surface of interest. Usually, the continuous camera output for each case (i.e., animal, poultry) for each collection time is saved (e.g., for 5-10 s) onto a digital video with particular numbers of individual frames (e.g., 10-50) per s of recording. Single digitized image is captured as a still and saved into the grey scale graphics file prior to analysis using image processing softwares. Images are calibrated by...