In this study, a non-destructive evaluation (NDE) mothod is proposed for ball bearings contaminated with micro foreign substances, which were inserted into a ball bearing to create a defective specimen. The non-contact quantitative infrared thermographic technique was applied for NDE condition monitoring. Passive thermographic experiments were conducted to perform early fault diagnosis, for bearings operated at optimized torque status under a dynamic load condition. The temperature profiles for normal and defective specimens were quantitatively compared, and the thermographic data analyzed. Based on the NDE results, the temperature characteristics and abnormal fault detection of the ball bearing were quantitatively analyzed according to the rise in temperature.