An innovative system for 3D clinical photography in the resource-limited settings
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RESEARCH
Open Access
An innovative system for 3D clinical photography in the resource-limited settings Saharnaz Baghdadchi1†, Kimberly Liu2†, Jacquelyn Knapp3, Gabriel Prager4, Susannah Graves1, Kevan Akrami1, Rolanda Manuel5, Rui Bastos5, Erin Reid1, Dennis Carson1, Sadik Esener1, Joseph Carson6* and Yu-Tsueng Liu1*
Abstract Background: Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) is the most frequently occurring cancer in Mozambique among men and the second most frequently occurring cancer among women. Effective therapeutic treatments for KS are poorly understood in this area. There is an unmet need to develop a simple but accurate tool for improved monitoring and diagnosis in a resource-limited setting. Standardized clinical photographs have been considered to be an essential part of the evaluation. Methods: When a therapeutic response is achieved, nodular KS often exhibits a reduction of the thickness without a change in the base area of the lesion. To evaluate the vertical space along with other characters of a KS lesion, we have created an innovative imaging system with a consumer light-field camera attached to a miniature “photography studio” adaptor. The image file can be further processed by computational methods for quantification. Results: With this novel imaging system, each high-quality 3D image was consistently obtained with a single camera shot at bedside by minimally trained personnel. After computational processing, all-focused photos and measurable 3D parameters were obtained. More than 80 KS image sets were processed in a semi-automated fashion. Conclusions: In this proof-of-concept study, the feasibility to use a simple, low-cost and user-friendly system has been established for future clinical study to monitor KS therapeutic response. This 3D imaging system can be also applied to obtain standardized clinical photographs for other diseases.
Background It cannot be over-emphasized that high-quality images are critical for clinical decisions. The current trend of establishing electronic health record (EHR) in the resource-rich settings and mobile device-based health care system to reach patients in the resource-limited settings makes standardization and acquisition of high-quality clinical photography an imperative issue. Standardization of clinical images is not only crucial for disease diagnosis, patient follow-up, clinical communication and medical education, but also for computer-aided clinical management. While nearly all of the radiological imaging systems, e.g. plain X ray, CT, MRI and ultrasound, have standard guidelines for obtaining and interpreting images, there is little consensus or effort in clinical photography except for a few areas, * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] † Equal contributors 1 University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, California 6 College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
such as presenting the outcome of a plastic surgery. In fact, many diseases can be diagnosed by their characteristic pre
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