Quantification Of Thermal Asymmetry In Diabetic Foot Disease

摘要

We present advancements on the analysis of infrared (IR) images of lower limbs of patients with diabetic foot disease (DFD). Our task is to study and identify alterations in the heat emission as result of the DFD. This is performed through the calculation of the Spearman's correlation coefficient. As result we found natural asymmetry values in non-diabetic controls of 12%(±7%) and 24%(±16%) for the front and back views of the limbs, respectively. In the evaluated patients we observed a remarkable tendency towards values outside the range of natural asymmetry found. For the purpose of validating the consistency of the study, we use the ROC criteria, having then that the specificity and sensitivity are: 76.5% and 70.5% for the front view and 88.2% and 54.5% for the back view, respectively. The current assessment of the content of information in the IR-images seems to display distinctive features between DFD patients and controls free from DFD.