Processing of foot pressure images and display of an advanced clinical parameter PR in Diabetic Neuropathy

Abstract

In diabetic foot, sensation loss predisposes to skin ulceration which may result in amputation, the most feared complication. Therefore, understanding and detection of factors responsible for plantar ulceration and their measurement reproducibly is necessary to save the foot at risk. As peak foot pressure were not sufficiently sensitive, power ratio (PR), a new diagnostic parameter, by analysis of foot pressure distribution in standing and walking images of foot has been developed. PR is related to different levels of sensation loss in the diabetic foot algorithm is developed (in MATLAB) to automatically separate (crop) bitmap files of different foot sizes. Algorithm is also developed (in Visual C ++) to calculate PR of cropped images and display simultaneously PR of all foot sole areas. This display of PR simultaneously in all foot areas helps clinician to effectively discriminate between normal, early and advanced stages of diabetic neuropathic subjects and also in detecting foot sole areas at risk