Leveraging smart image processing techniques for early detection of foot ulcers using a deep learning network.

Purpose: To detect foot ulcers in diabetic patients by analysing thermal images of the foot using a deep learning model and estimate the effectiveness of the proposed model by comparing it with some existing studies.

Material and methods: Open-source thermal images were used for the study. The dataset consists of two types of images of the feet of diabetic patients: normal and abnormal foot images. The dataset contains 1055 total images; among these, 543 are normal foot images, and the others are images of abnormal feet of the patient. The study's dataset was converted into a new and pre-processed dataset by applying canny edge detection and watershed segmentation. This pre-processed dataset was then balanced and enlarged using data augmentation, and after that, for prediction, a deep learning model was applied for the diagnosis of an ulcer in the foot. After applying canny edge detection and segmentation, the pre-processed dataset can enhance the model's performance for correct predictions and reduce the computational cost.

Results: Our proposed model, utilizing ResNet50 and EfficientNetB0, was tested on both the original dataset and the pre-processed dataset after applying edge detection and segmentation. The results were highly promising, with ResNet50 achieving 89% and 89.1% accuracy for the two datasets, respectively, and EfficientNetB0 surpassing this with 96.1% and 99.4% accuracy for the two datasets, respectively.

Conclusions: Our study offers a practical solution for foot ulcer detection, particularly in situations where expert analysis is not readily available. The efficacy of our models was tested using real images, and they outperformed other available models, demonstrating their potential for real-world application.