Evaluation of Infrared Thermography and Histopathological Study of Pneumonia in pre and Post Slaughtered Calves at Abattoir

This study was designed to evaluate the infrared thermography technique (IRT) to detect the pneumonia in calves at Blan abattoir between November 2023 and February 2024 in Zakho city, Iraq. Routine lung inspection procedures were done to investigate the presence of the pathological lesions. Data were collected from 472 male calves, aged 1.5 – 2 years. Infected lungs collected for histopathological examination. For peripheral temperature data collection, focal sampling employing infrared thermal camera. Results revealed that 118 (25%) lungs were found with pneumonic lesions. Although, after histological diagnosis, pneumonia was found in 107 (22.6%) lungs. The eye temperature was significantly (P<0.01) lower in infected animals (34.2 ± 0.2 °C) in comparison to healthy animals (36.8 ± 0.2 °C). The sensitivity was 0.97 and the specificity (1 – specificity) was 0.61 according to the findings. According to the results obtained in this study, it can be concluded that examining animals at abattoirs pre-slaughter using IRT is beneficial detecting infected animals. Therefore examining them is vital for human health status, as well as the pathological features was concluded that 3 main forms of different types of pneumonia which recorded according to macroscopical and histological features.