Table 3 –

Infrared Thermography Studies

Infrared thermography (N = 7)
Author	Population	Total No. of participants No. of sites/images Males : Females	Use of Control Groups	Use of Travell and Simons’ criteria	MTrP property measured
Cojocaru et al. 2015	Patients with low back pain	N = 8 Not reported Not reported	No control group of participants. No mention of control sites	Not reported	Temperature for the whole lumbar region and for MTrPs
Gabrhel et al. 2013	Patients of both sexes with pelvic-femoral pain admitted to a rehabilitation medicine clinic	N = 83 Not reported 42:41	No control group of participants. Contralateral unaffected regions used for comparison	Yes	Temperature differences in gluteal region Sensitivity and specificity
Girasol et al. 2018	Participants of both sexes aged 18–45 with chronic neck pain of more than 3m duration with an A-MTrP in the upper trapezius muscle	N = 40 Not reported 2:38	No control group of participants. No mention of control sites	Yes	Temperature, correlation with other variables
Haddad et al. 2012	Female participants with masticatory pain with not history of systemic problems and no history of TMDs	N = 26 N = 780 ROIs All female	No control group	Not reported	Temperature of regions of masseter muscle correlated with PPT Sensitivity and specificity
Magalhães et al. 2015	Participants from a university community aged 18–45 with BMI 20–25	N = 15 Not reported 2:13	No specific control group of participants, comparison between treatment groups	Yes	Temperature differences after application of compressive forces
Skorupska et al. 2015	Chronic sciatica patients aged 30–60 with unilateral leg pain for > 3 months	N = 50 Not reported 21:29	No specific control group of participants, comparison between TrP-positive and TrP-negative individuals	Yes	Temperature pre- and post-treatment with DNa
Zhang et al. 2009	Healthy participants without any signs or symptoms of musculoskeletal pain	N = 15 Not reported 11:4	No control group of participants, contralateral unaffected regions used for comparison	Not reported	Temperature differences Temperature pre- and post-treatment with glutamate injections

^aDry needling.