In this paper, a novel handheld 3D medical thermography system is introduced. The proposed system consists of a thermal-infrared camera, a color camera and a depth camera rigidly attached in close proximity and mounted on an ergonomic handle. As a practitioner holding the device smoothly moves it around the human body parts, the proposed system generates and builds up a precise 3D thermogram model by incorporating information from each new measurement in real-time. The data is acquired in motion, thus it provides multiple points of view. When processed, these multiple points of view are adaptively combined by taking into account the reliability of each individual measurement which can vary due to a variety of factors such as angle of incidence, distance between the device and the subject and environmental sensor data or other factors influencing a confidence of the thermal-infrared data when captured. Finally, several case studies are presented to support the usability and performance of the proposed system.

Date Published: 12 May 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9485, Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XXXVII, 94851J (12 May 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2177880

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9485:
Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XXXVII
Sheng-Jen (Tony) Hsieh; Joseph N. Zalameda, Editor(s)