engleski

3D topographic measurements for telemedicine applications

Measurements of the human body topology have been of great interest of medical personnel and scientists in the past. Through the different techniques, informations that describe shape have been collected and the result was tried to be analysed for practical implementation in the clinical practice, as well as in other sciences where the shape of object, that is in contact with human body, must be determined by its contours. The results were used (what extend to now days) in orthotic and prosthetic production, biometrics, shoemaking, clothes industry etc. There are certainly other fields where such information is of invaluable help, such as furniture manufacturing and determination of appropriate living and working space. Today, the lists of usefulness of these measurements have been extended in many directions. 3D topologic measurement is assumed as measurement of the coordinates of the points in 3D space, which forms surface that represents body boundary towards surrounding environment. The methodologies of this measurement have been based on the sand, plaster, and clay or wax casting of the body parts, what resulted in impression creation. These impressions were used as a mould or were filled with other material such as plaster in the favour of getting appropriate mould for further manipulations. This was quite time demanding, with unexpected errors due to imperfection of the material properties or human manual imprecision. Also, gathered forms needed a lot of space for storage. Even today these principle is often seen in practice. Digital technology brought tremendous change in how the shape is obtained. Although initially presented techniques were not very practical (most of them was based on tactile principle), by advantages in digital imaging (photogrammetry, structured light), and measurement of time of light flight (laser principle), new and very accurate systems provide for fast, precise and dense non-contact surface measurement. By the fall of the price of the hardware components and improvements in adjacent software support these devices became commercially available. Also, their size shrink what made them small and appropriate for clinical application. Today there are numerous medical occupations where obtaining of the shape of the human body take its place, such as orthotic and prosthetic production, dermatology, orthopaedic surgery, forensic medicine, sport medicine etc. Since information is stored digitally it can be easily transmitted to the remote locations via network, to be processed scientifically or being used in other way.

human body measurement; digitizing; digital image processing

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