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Assessing peripheral vascular disease from a thermal image

  • US 9,256,937 B2
  • Filed: 01/22/2014
  • Issued: 02/09/2016
  • Est. Priority Date: 01/22/2014
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A computer implemented method for assessing peripheral vascular disease from a thermal image, the method comprising:

  • receiving a thermal image of an area of exposed skin of at least one peripheral body part of a subject of interest being monitored for peripheral vascular disease, said thermal image being acquired by a thermal imaging system, said thermal image comprising a plurality of pixels, the value of each pixel corresponding to a skin surface temperature;

    analyzing said thermal image to stratify said at least one peripheral body part into a plurality of skin surface regions;

    identifying skin surface temperatures for each respective skin surface region based on pixels in said thermal image associated with each region; and

    determining, by a processor executing machine readable program instructions, based on temperature changes of said at least one said surface region of said peripheral body part, whether said subject has peripheral vascular disease, comprising any of;

    exceeding a threshold of the average temperature from another similar said surface region, exceeding a threshold of high-order statistics of temperature from another similar surface region, a comparison of temperatures between said peripheral body part and a second similar peripheral body part of said subject, a comparison of temperatures retrieved from a database, a comparison of temperatures of a similar peripheral body part obtained at a different time, and any combinations hereof, wherein said threshold is calculated based on any of;

    a histogram of temperature distributions of said skin surface regions, and a color difference of said thermal image of said skin surface region.

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