A Noncontact Method for Locating Radial Artery above Radial Styloid Process in Thermal Image.

Xingguang Geng,Yitao Zhang,Shaolong Zhang,Jiena Hou,Jun Zhang,Haiying Zhang,Su Liu

doi:10.1155/2020/4057154

Abstract

A radial artery above the radial styloid process is called GUAN and is a critical position for collecting pulse wave in traditional Chinese medicine theory. Locating GUAN is a precondition for collecting radial pulse wave. However, existing methods for locating GUAN lead to large deviations. This paper proposes a novel nontouch method for locating GUAN based on thermal imaging and image processing. This method consists of three parts: the infrared thermal imaging location imaging platform, the wrist edge contour extraction algorithm based on arbitrary angle edge recognition, and radial protrusion recognition algorithm (x coordinate identification algorithm of GUAN) and radial artery fitting algorithm (y coordinate identification algorithm of GUAN). The infrared thermal imaging positioning imaging platform is used to ensure that the wrist of the subject enters the fixed imaging area in a fixed position during each measurement and transmits the thermal imaging images carrying the image information of radial processes and radial arteries to the upper computer. Arbitrary angle edge recognition algorithm is used to extract wrist contour and radial artery edge information. The x-axis coordinates of the radial artery were provided by the identification algorithm, and the y-axis coordinates of the radial artery were provided by the fitting algorithm. Finally, the x and y coordinates determine the GUAN position. The algorithm for locating GUAN could provide repeatable and reliable x and y coordinates. The proposed method shows that relative standard deviation (RSD) of x distance of GUAN is less than 9.0% and RSD of y distance of GUAN is less than 5.0%. The proposed method could provide valid GUAN coordinates and reduce deviations of locating GUAN.

Highlights

Radial pulse waves contain rich information about the physiological condition of a body. e analysis of the radial pulse waves is regarded as an important approach to evaluate patient status in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) [1,2,3]
Locating GUAN is not achieved by the pressure sensor arrays with a small gap [6, 10] because sensor units in the array could be susceptible to vibration interference among them through connection materials
We propose a novel method for locating GUAN based on thermal imaging and image processing

Summary

Introduction

Radial pulse waves contain rich information about the physiological condition of a body. e analysis of the radial pulse waves is regarded as an important approach to evaluate patient status in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) [1,2,3]. Current methods for locating GUAN, including tactile sense and pressure sensor array, could not achieve precise positioning [5, 6, 9,10,11,12,13] When sizes of those single sensors are almost less than 10 mm × 10 mm, it is difficult for people to place sensitive areas of a single sensor at the center of GUAN each time by tactile sense [4, 7, 13,14,15]. E method includes three steps: (1) getting the thermal image of a wrist through the proposed thermal imaging platform; (2) extracting continuous wrist edges by edge detection algorithm; (3) obtaining x and y coordinates of GUAN by recognizing features of the radial styloid process and radial artery. E method includes three steps: (1) getting the thermal image of a wrist through the proposed thermal imaging platform; (2) extracting continuous wrist edges by edge detection algorithm; (3) obtaining x and y coordinates of GUAN by recognizing features of the radial styloid process and radial artery. e proposed method could achieve better positioning accuracy and provide reliable coordinates of GUAN

Materials and Methods

Experiments and Results

Discussion

Further Work

Conclusions