A method for generating 3D thermal models with decoupled acquisition.

•A method for generation of 3D thermal models that allows combination of separately acquired 3D mesh and thermal images.•An intensity transformation approach that allows effective interest point detection on thermal images.•Design and implementation of a test object, called HTTO (Heat Texture Test Object), for 3D model and 2D thermogram fusion methods based on interest point detection.•Quantitative evaluation on human subjects: becoming possible the 3D thermography for medical applications under decoupled acquisition scenarios.