Safety and Security Department, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Graz 8020, Austria.
Sensors (Basel). 2013 Aug 14;13(8):10584-98. doi: 10.3390/s130810584.
Heart failure is a common cardiac disease in elderly patients. After discharge, approximately 50% of all patients are readmitted to a hospital within six months. Recent studies show that home monitoring of heart failure patients can reduce the number of readmissions. Still, a large number of false positive alarms as well as underdiagnoses in other cases require more accurate alarm generation algorithms. New low-cost sensors for leg edema detection could be the missing link to help home monitoring to its breakthrough. We evaluated a 3D camera-based measurement setup in order to geometrically detect and quantify leg edemas. 3D images of legs were taken and geometric parameters were extracted semi-automatically from the images. Intra-subject variability for five healthy subjects was evaluated. Thereafter, correlation of 3D parameters with body weight and leg circumference was assessed during a clinical study at the Medical University of Graz. Strong correlation was found in between both reference values and instep height, while correlation in between curvature of the lower leg and references was very low. We conclude that 3D imaging might be a useful and cost-effective extension of home monitoring for heart failure patients, though further (prospective) studies are needed.
心力衰竭是老年患者常见的心脏疾病。出院后，大约 50%的患者在六个月内会再次住院。最近的研究表明，对心力衰竭患者进行家庭监测可以减少再次住院的人数。然而，大量的假阳性警报以及其他情况下的漏诊都需要更精确的警报生成算法。新的低成本腿部水肿检测传感器可能是实现家庭监测突破的关键。我们评估了一种基于 3D 相机的测量设置，以便从几何角度检测和量化腿部水肿。拍摄腿部的 3D 图像，并从图像中半自动提取几何参数。对五名健康受试者的个体内变异性进行了评估。然后，在格拉茨医科大学的一项临床研究中，评估了 3D 参数与体重和腿围的相关性。在参考值和脚背高度之间发现了很强的相关性，而在小腿曲率和参考值之间的相关性非常低。我们得出结论，3D 成像可能是心力衰竭患者家庭监测的有用且具有成本效益的扩展，尽管还需要进一步的（前瞻性）研究。
