The present study was conducted to examine whether the radiation thermometer was clinically useable. the subjects were 20 adults,10 females and 10 males. The nasal skin temperature was measured with a radiation thermometer and a thermograph at the same time. The range and coefficient of variation (CV) of the nasal skin temperature were calculated from the raw data as well as the adjusted data. Both the range and CV of the radiation thermometer were compared with those of thermograph. Wilcoxon signed-ranks test was used to examine the differences in the distribution of the range and CV between the radiation thermometer and the thermograph. There were significant differences in the range as well as the CV of the raw data between the radiation thermometer and the thermograph. No significant differences in range as well as CV were found, however, between adjusted data obtained from radiation thermometer and raw data obtained from the thermograph.
These results indicated that adjusted data were more accurate than the raw data from the radiation thermometer. It was also suggested that the radiation thermometer was able to measure the variation of the nasal skin temperature. It was, therefore, concluded that the radiation thermometer could be clinically useful in monitoring patients' emotions as viewed in the previous studies on the thermograph.