Korelidou Vera, Simitzis Panagiotis, Massouras Theofilos, Gelasakis Athanasios I
Laboratory of Anatomy and Physiology of Farm Animals, Department of Animal Science, School of Animal Biosciences, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Iera Odos 75 Str., 11855 Athens, Greece.
Laboratory of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, Department of Animal Science, School of Animal Biosciences, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Iera Odos 75 Str., 11855 Athens, Greece.
Animals (Basel). 2024 Sep 16;14(18):2691. doi: 10.3390/ani14182691.
Among the health issues of major concern in dairy ruminants, mastitis stands out as being associated with considerable losses in productivity and compromised animal health and welfare. Currently, the available methods for the early detection of mastitis are either inaccurate, requiring further validation, or expensive and labor intensive. Moreover, most of them cannot be applied at the point of care. Infrared thermography (IRT) is a rapid, non-invasive technology that can be used to measure udder temperature and identify variations and inconsistencies thereof, serving as a benchmarking tool for the assessment of udders' physiological and/or health status. Despite the numerous applications in livestock farming, IRT is still underexploited due to the lack of standardized operation procedures and significant gaps regarding the optimum settings of the thermal cameras, which are currently exploited on a case-specific basis. Therefore, the objective of this review paper was twofold: first, to provide the state of knowledge on the applications of IRT for the assessment of udder health status in dairy ruminants, and second, to summarize and discuss the major strengths and weaknesses of IRT application at the point of care, as well as future challenges and opportunities of its extensive adoption for the diagnosis of udder health status and control of mastitis at the animal and herd levels.
在奶牛反刍动物主要关注的健康问题中，乳腺炎尤为突出，它会导致生产力大幅下降，并损害动物健康和福利。目前，现有的乳腺炎早期检测方法要么不准确，需要进一步验证，要么成本高昂且劳动强度大。此外，它们中的大多数无法在护理点应用。红外热成像（IRT）是一种快速、非侵入性的技术，可用于测量乳房温度并识别其变化和不一致之处，作为评估乳房生理和/或健康状况的基准工具。尽管IRT在畜牧业中有众多应用，但由于缺乏标准化操作程序以及热成像相机最佳设置方面存在重大差距，目前仍未得到充分利用，这些设置目前是根据具体情况进行使用的。因此，本综述文章的目的有两个：第一，提供关于IRT在评估奶牛反刍动物乳房健康状况方面应用的知识现状；第二，总结和讨论IRT在护理点应用的主要优势和劣势，以及其广泛应用于动物和畜群水平的乳房健康状况诊断和乳腺炎控制的未来挑战和机遇。
