Analysis of dermal activity and skin images for diabetic kidney disease

Abstract

Any electrical input to skin, changes the ion concentration in sweat, leading to variations in electro dermal activity (EDA) and hence in skin conductivity. Structurally, the pores and connecting tissues contribute to skin texture. Diabetes leads to micro-vascular complications thus affecting the innervations of C-nerve fibres, thereby skin conductivity and micro texture also changes. Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is another condition under which hydration level and urea in serum and sweat varies leading to dermal changes. Therefore EDA and microscopic-images are acquired from volunteers catering to normal, diabetic and DKD. Features are extracted after convolving EDA signals with Morlet-wavelet and pre-processing the micro texture image for hair removal and enhancement. An expert system is designed to take these features as input and for broad classification. The result of this study demonstrates the influence of serum urea on skin conductivity and texture, thereby enabling skin based method of diagnosing diabetics and DKD.