Characterization of feet temperature

CHARACTERIZATION OF FEET TEMPERATURE
1
Carvalho, Soraia ; Pereira, Ana I.
1
2
[email protected], ESTiG / Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal
2
[email protected], ESTiG / Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal
ABSTRACT
There are many diseases that directly affect the foot plant, some examples are the diabetic foot and the ulcers,
among the others. The main objective of this study is to define an alternative diagnostics for the early detection of
the disease on the foot. The early detection of the diseases will permit an effective application of a given
treatment, which increases the probability of disease elimination.
In this study it was made a comparative mathematical study between two types of feet: the healthy and the
diabetic feet. Thermal plantar images were used to support a mathematical model for the feet temperature
distribution. The thermographic images were obtained using a thermal camera applying a rigorous process to
archive them. In order to obtain the temperature distribution matrix some image processing techniques were used
(Bento, 2011; Carvalho and Pereira, 2012).
Two nonlinear optimization methods were applied to minimize the quadratic square error between the
mathematical modeling and the real temperature distribution (Carvalho and Pereira, 2013b). In this study, some
local and global methods were compared: the pattern search method and two variants of the genetic algorithm
method (Carvalho and Pereira, 2013a).
As conclusion it was possible to identify some characteristics and some significant differences between the feet
temperature distribution in healthy and diabetic feet. Finally, as future work, we want to test others optimization
techniques in order to improve the numerical results. Test others mathematical models and expand the study to
other kind of diseases are other possibilities.
Keywords: Global Optimization; Nonlinear Optimization; Temperature Distribution.
REFERENCES
Bento, D. (2011). Modelação matemática da variação da temperatura no pé. Master Thesis of Biomedical
Technologic Course, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança – Portugal.
Carvalho, S. (2012). Modelação Matemática da Variação da Temperatura do Pé. Final project of Biomedical
Engineering Course, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança - Portugal.
Carvalho, S. and Pereira, A. (2013a). Modelação Matemática da Temperatura do Pé, XVI Congresso da
Associação Portuguesa de Investigação Operacional, Bragança, pp. 56-57.
Carvalho, S. and Pereira, A. (2013b). Characterization of Feet Temperature, 11th International Conference of
Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, Rhodes - Greece.