Assessment of peripheral vascular structures with infrared thermal imaging

Within the scope of the study, it is aimed to diagnose the disease by evaluating the lower extremity peripheral vascular structures through infrared thermal imaging and artificial intelligence algorithms and to organize the training programs in the light of these data by monitoring the training performances of professional athletes. Thermogram data of 37 individuals, 11 athletes, 10 healthy, 10 with cardiovascular risk, and 6 patients, were recorded by means of an infrared thermal camera with a microbolometer sensor. Records were obtained in a temperature-controlled room. Temperature distributions before and after the exertion (10 minutes, 6 km/h) were taken in a temperature-controlled room. In the analysis phase, Haralick texture features and statistical properties were extracted from the normalized thermal images. Contrast, homogeneity, mean, standard deviation and variance values of the features showed a statistically significant difference between the groups. Haralick texture features were trained with the cubic type support vector machine algorithm and a 98.7% success rate was obtained as a result of the training. The hot region distribution images were normalized and trained with the CNN model, and a 95.7% success rate was obtained after the training. The frequency features were trained with the cosine type K-nearest neighbor algorithm and an 80% success rate was obtained after the training. The outputs of the three trained models form the input layer of the feedforward neural network model at the final stage. The artificial neural network model has being a success rate of 99.1%. The overall success rate of the proposed system was acquired as 90.6%. The highest temperature increase due to effort was observed in the athlete group, while the lowest was observed in the patient group. The main reason for the temperature difference is the difference in the amount of blood carried to the lower extremity area between the groups. When the mean temperature values before or after the effort were examined alone, it was determined that there was no significant difference between the groups.