Digital Vein Mapping Using Augmented Reality

Abstract

Vein detection is an important issue for the medical field. There are some commercial devices for detecting veins using infrared radiation. However, most of these commercial solutions are cost-prohibitive. Recently, veins detection has attracted much attention from research teams. The main focus is on developing real-time systems with low-cost hardware. Systems developed to reduce costs suffer from low frame rates. This, in turn, makes these systems not suitable for real-world applications. On the other hand, systems that use powerful processors to produce high frame rates suffer from high costs and a lack of mobility. In this paper, a real-time vein mapping prototype using augmented reality is proposed. The proposed prototype provides a compromised solution to produce high frame rates with a low-cost system. It consists of a USB camera attached to an Android smartphone used for real-time detection. Infrared radiation is employed to differentiate the veins using 20 Infrared Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). The captured frames are processed to enhance vein detection using light computational algorithms to improve real-time processing and increase frame rate. Finally, the enhanced view of veins appears on the smartphone screen. Portability and economic cost are taken into consideration while developing the proposed prototype. The proposed prototype is tested with people of different ages and gender, as well as using mobile devices of different specifications. The results show a high vein detection rate and a high frame rate compared to other existing systems.