Thermal imaging method in the evaluation of obesity in various body regions–A preliminary study

Abstract

Technologies like 3-dimensional scanners and thermal imaging are slowly overtaking the traditional means of evaluating the obesity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mean skin surface temperature of different regions such as abdominal, shank, gluteal (thigh), forearm, neck, fingerbed region and to study the potential of feature extracted from thermograph of various region and its measured skin temperature values in the evaluation of obesity. In this preliminary study 30 normal and 30 obese young adult of age 19- 23 years were invited out of which 30 were female and 30 were male. Thermal imaging of abdominal, shank, gluteal, forearm, neck and fingerbed regions was acquired and average skin temperature was estimated in various regions for obese and normal subjects. Among the six region studied, neck region shows the greater temperature variation between the study population. In total population studied, the feature extracted parameter depicted positive association with mean skin surface temperature in various regions. Among various feature extracted parameters, mean and total standard deviation depicted the highest significance in abdomen (mean- r = 0.877, TSD- r = 0.449), neck (mean- r = 0.910, TSD- r = -0.617) and in forearm region (mean- r = 0.918, TSD- r = -0.404). ANOVA test provided a significant difference between the skin surface temperature of the groups (normal and obese subjects) at abdomen [F (1, 58) = 261.265, p< 0.05], forearm [F (1, 58) = 619.586, p< 0.05] and neck region [F (1, 58) = 492.322, p< 0.05]. Feed Forward Back Propagation Neural Network provided 98% accuracy, 95% sensitivity and 92% specificity while classifying normal and obese subjects.