Abstract
ABSTRACT As per the World Health Organization, 94% of all maternal death occurred in low- and middle-income countries. Monitoring foetal heath in these countries is expensive due to the shortage of medical professionals as well as access to facilities. A cost-effective tool for monitoring the foetal growth non-invasively is the need of the hour. One such method is to monitor the skin surface distribution of the abdomen region using an infrared imaging device. The temperature distribution is a physiological response due to the underlying anatomical changes. But, interpretation of this data is qualitative requiring skill and experience. Therefore, there is a need to process the thermal images for quantification for better interpretation with minimum user intervention or expertise. This would help the physician to understand the location of the affected area and its functional disorder to decide on the follow-up treatment. The present research focusses on the enhancement of thermal images using filtering and segmentation techniques. The images were obtained from the abdominal region of pregnant women at various stages of gestation and pregnant with a singleton or twin is processed for enhancement. Histogram method and Otsu thresholding was implemented to augment the image. The correlation was found from the thermal pattern with respect to the foetal gestation period as well as for twin or singleton. Though the sample size is small to confirm this as a stand-alone tool, the results suggest that thermal scanning can be used as a safe and reliable adjunct tool for monitoring foetal growth.
Published Version
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