The use of thermal imaging and computer vision has seen a sharp increase in recent years. This paper presents the current state of the art concerning these fields. Thus, a review of research articles studying the combination of these technologies for pattern recognition is established. After presenting an overview of the topic, a bibliometric analysis is selected based on 1160 articles extracted from the Scopus database, which allows assessing the temporal evolution of the publications and the study of their most relevant sources, authors, keywords, trend topics, and publishing countries. Besides, a particular focus is given to the issue of defect detection using thermal imaging and computer vision. The related articles are analyzed and classified into their primary domains. The results confirm that combining thermal imaging with computer vision techniques has become commonly used in several fields. However, the defects detection case studies using these technologies are focused on a few application fields. Thus, more contributions are required regarding this specific issue in more innovative applications. This review will help to guide future research contributions within all fields where creative uses of infrared thermal imaging and computer vision can be developed to recognize different patterns and issues.