Preliminary Analysis of Skin Temperature Asymmetries in Elite Young Tennis Players

Abstract

This preliminary study aimed to assess skin temperature (Tsk) asymmetries before and after on-court training in elite young tennis players and to find the correlation between these asymmetries and demographic data, racquet characteristics, and pain and fatigue variation. Thermal images of nine tennis players were taken before and after two and a half hours of standardised training. Thermal asymmetries were correlated to age, years of experience, racquet weight, string tension, body mass index (BMI), and variation in fatigue and pain. In contralateral comparison, Tsk was higher on the dominant side in areas such as the anterior (1.1 ± 0.5 °C, p < 0.001, ES = 0.5) and posterior forearm (1.1 ± 1 °C, p < 0.01, ES = 0.5). Concerning pre- and post-comparisons, post-training Tsk values were lower in all regions except in the posterior forearm, posterior shoulder, and posterior leg. Finally, significant correlations were found between thermal asymmetry and weight of the racquet, body mass index, fatigue and pain variation. Monitoring tennis players’ Tsk with infrared thermography (IRT) gives coaches vital information to evaluate contralateral asymmetries and technical pattern activations during training sessions.

Infrared Thermography for Real-Time Assessment of the Effectiveness of Scoliosis Braces

“…The acquired data are stored directly on the smartphone as images with dimensions of 1440 × 1080 pixels, while the thermal resolution of the camera is 160 × 120 pixels. In accordance with the methodology outlined in [41,42], each patient was positioned at a specified distance from the camera. A marked spot on the floor, situated 1 m away from the IR camera, was designated as the reference point.…”

“…This has paved the way for the rise of decision-support systems that can furnish healthcare professionals with fast, reliable, and objective results in diverse scenarios, including the evaluation of inflammatory processes [35,36], detection of infections, [37] diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome [38], monitoring of diabetesrelated conditions [39], and assessment of eye diseases [40]. In the field of rehabilitation and orthopedics, these systems are used for ergonomic evaluations [41], injury prevention and assessment [42,43], scoliosis diagnosis [44,45], and brace manufacturing [46]. In Figure 1, some of the aforementioned healthcare-related scenarios are illustrated.…”