Statistical approximation of plantar temperature distribution on diabetic subjects based on beta mixture model

A change in plantar temperature distribution can be an indicator of tissue damage, inflammation, or peripheral vascular abnormalities associated with diabetic foot. Despite the efforts to detect these abnormalities through infrared thermography, there are still several problems to be addressed, especially to detect abnormalities on each foot separately. In this paper, a characterization of the plantar temperature distribution based on a probabilistic approach is proposed. The objective is to detect temperature variations on each foot eluding contralateral comparison. A beta mixture model with four components approximates the plantar temperature distributions of diabetic and non-diabetic subjects. Each component represents an area of the plantar region: toes; metatarsal heads; arch; and heel. The approximation was applied to 60 temperature distributions of non-diabetic subjects and 220 of diabetic subjects. The results suggest that it is possible to characterize distribution in terms of the mean of its beta components

Quantitative Estimation of Temperature Variations in Plantar Angiosomes: A Study Case for Diabetic Foot

Thermography is a useful tool since it provides information that may help in the diagnostic of several diseases in a noninvasive and fast way. Particularly, thermography has been applied in the study of the diabetic foot. However, most of these studies report only qualitative information making it difficult to measure significant parameters such as temperature variations. These variations are important in the analysis of the diabetic foot since they could bring knowledge, for instance, regarding ulceration risks. The early detection of ulceration risks is considered an important research topic in the medicine field, as its objective is to avoid major complications that might lead to a limb amputation. The absence of symptoms in the early phase of the ulceration is conceived as the main disadvantage to provide an opportune diagnostic in subjects with neuropathy. Since the relation between temperature and ulceration risks is well established in the literature, a methodology that obtains quantitative temperature differences in the plantar area of the diabetic foot to detect ulceration risks is proposed in this work. Such methodology is based on the angiosome concept and image processing

ESICM LIVES 2016: part two : Milan, Italy. 1-5 October 2016.

Meeting abstrac