• Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences
  • Vol. 13, Issue 4, 2050020 (2020)
Chaoying Tang*, Yimin Yuan, Shuhang Xia, Gehua Ma, and Biao Wang
Author Affiliations
  • Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211106, P. R. China
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    DOI: 10.1142/s1793545820500200 Cite this Article
    Chaoying Tang, Yimin Yuan, Shuhang Xia, Gehua Ma, Biao Wang. Visualizing veins from color skin images using convolutional neural networks[J]. Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences, 2020, 13(4): 2050020 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    Intravenous cannulation is the most important phase in medical practices. Currently, limited literature is available about visibility of veins and the characteristics of patients associated with di±cult intravenous access. In modern medical treatment, a major challenge is locating veins for patients who have di±cult venous access. Presently, some products of vein locators are available in the market to improve vein access, but they need auxiliary equipment such as near infrared (NIR) illumination and camera, which add weight and cost to the devices, and cause inconveniences to daily medical care. In this paper, a vein visualization algorithm based on the deep learning method was proposed. Based on a group of synchronous RGB/NIR arm images, a convolutional neural network (CNN) model was designed to implement the mapping from RGB to NIR images, where veins can be detected fromskin. The model has a simple structure and less optimization parameters. A color transfer scheme was also proposed to make the network adaptive to the images taken by smartphone in daily medical treatments. Comprehensive experiments were conducted on three datasets to evaluate the proposed method. Subjective and objective evaluations showed the effectiveness of the proposed method. These results indicated that the deep learning-based method can be used for visualizing veins in medical care applications.
    Chaoying Tang, Yimin Yuan, Shuhang Xia, Gehua Ma, Biao Wang. Visualizing veins from color skin images using convolutional neural networks[J]. Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences, 2020, 13(4): 2050020
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