Digital infrared thermal imaging(DITI) has been proposed as a diagnostic aid in patient with many disease entities, such as the cardiovascular, the neurologic, the musculoskeletal diseases and so on. Supporters of thermography state that normal patients have the normal thermograms and abnormal patients have the abnormal thermograms. The purpose of this study was to determine how much a cigarette will affect skin temperature change in the course of normal day's smoking.

Twenty one healthy smokers(mean age, 27.4⁑5.1 years old) and fourteen nonsmokers(mean age, 24.4⁑1.6 years old) took parts in the study. All were male. The cigarette consumption averaged 14.0 per day. Smokers maintained their smoking habit in the ambient temperature before on initial measurement and smoked a cigarette in the controlled laboratory room. Measurements were taken for 5 minutes, 1 hour and 2 hours afterward. The skin temperature of the face, the both palms and the both soles was measured using Dorex^Ⱂ digital infrared thermal imaging system.

In all sessions, the skin temperature was higher on the face and lower on the sole. There were no significant differences of skin temperature on both sides of body in all subjects(p＞0.05). The skin temperature of all measured parts was significantly lower in the smoking group before and 5 minutes after smoking(p＜0.01). There were no significant differences of skin temperature between smoker and nonsmoker after 1 hour of smoking(p＞0.01).