Visualizing veins from color skin images using convolutional neural networks

作     者：Chaoying Tang Yimin Yuan Shuhang Xia Gehua Ma Biao Wang Chaoying Tang;Yimin Yuan;Shuhang Xia;Gehua Ma;Biao Wang

作者机构：Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics NanjingJiangsu 211106P.R.China 

出 版 物：《Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences》 (创新光学健康科学杂志（英文）)

年 卷 期：2020年第3卷第4期

页      面：80-92页

核心收录：

学科分类：0831[工学-生物医学工程（可授工学、理学、医学学位）] 1004[医学-公共卫生与预防医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 0808[工学-电气工程] 0809[工学-电子科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 08[工学] 081104[工学-模式识别与智能系统] 080203[工学-机械设计及理论] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 0802[工学-机械工程] 0836[工学-生物工程] 0811[工学-控制科学与工程] 0702[理学-物理学] 

基　　金：supported by“the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities No.NS2019016” 

主　　题：Intravenous cannulation vein visualization convolutional neural network 

摘      要：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 difficult intravenous access.In modern medical treatment,a major challenge is locating veins for patients who have difficult 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 from skin.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 effec-tiveness of the proposed method.These results indicated that the deep learning-based method can be used for visualizing veins in medical care applications.