In commercial dairy cows, the conditions in which they are kept may lead to negative emotional states associated with the development of chronic physiological and behavioural abnormalities that may compromise their health, welfare and productivity. Such states include fear, stress or anxiety. Behavioural rather than physiological tests are more likely to be used to indicate these states but can be limited by their subjectivity, need for specialised infrastructure and training (of the operator and sometimes the animal) and the time-consuming nature of data collection. Popularly used physiological measures such as blood cortisol may be more appropriate for acute rather than chronic assessments but are easily confounded, for example by a response to the act of measurement per se. More sophisticated physiological measures such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) may be impractical due to cost and time and, like blood cortisol, have the confounding associated with the act of measurement. By contrast, infrared thermography of external body surfaces is remote, non-invasive, easily repeated and follows an objective methodology, allowing longitudinal data acquisition for the inference of changes in chronic emotional state over time. The objective of this review was to investigate the potential of infrared thermography to measure cow emotions. In lactating dairy cows, maximum IRT of the eyes and coronary band of the limbs seem to be most representative of thermoregulatory changes, which are repeatable and correlate with behavioural and physiological indicators of emotional state. IRT methodologies have the potential to become a fundamental tool for the objective assessment of welfare state in dairy cows.

在商业奶牛中，它们的饲养条件可能会导致与慢性生理和行为异常的发展相关的负面情绪状态，这可能会损害它们的健康、福利和生产力。这些状态包括恐惧、压力或焦虑。行为测试而非生理测试更有可能用于指示这些状态，但可能会受到主观性、对专门基础设施和培训（操作员，有时是动物）的需求以及数据收集的耗时性的限制。普遍使用的生理指标（如血皮质醇）可能更适合急性而不是慢性评估，但很容易混淆，例如对测量本身的反应. 由于成本和时间的原因，功能性磁共振成像 (fMRI) 和脑电图 (EEG) 等更复杂的生理测量可能不切实际，并且与血液皮质醇一样，具有与测量行为相关的混杂因素。相比之下，外部身体表面的红外热成像是远程的、非侵入性的、易于重复的并且遵循客观的方法，允许纵向数据采集以推断慢性情绪状态随时间的变化。本综述的目的是研究红外热成像测量奶牛情绪的潜力。在泌乳奶牛中，眼睛的最大 IRT 和四肢的冠状带似乎最能代表体温调节变化，这些变化是可重复的，并且与情绪状态的行为和生理指标相关。