Acta Orthop Belg
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Reliability of observer assessment of thermographic images in complex regional pain syndrome type 1.
This study aimed at evaluating the sensitivity, specificity, reliability and repeatability of observer assessment of thermographic images taken from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) type 1. A computer program was developed to let observers rate the difference between randomly presented thermographic images of pairs of hands of individuals. The sensitivity and specificity, and potential learning effects were measured. ⋯ There was a significant correlation between the colour pallet and the rating (r = 0.76). Although the colour pallet used partly explained the variance in the rating scores, this study shows that observer assessment of thermographic images may distinguish between CRPS1 patients and healthy controls. However, the reliability and repeatability of this assessment was rather low.