Skin Abnormality Monitoring Systems and Methods

Abstract

A method of monitoring skin abnormalities on a skin portion of a patient includes the steps of: receiving a first image data from an image capture device, wherein the first image data includes the first skin portion; identifying a first skin mask corresponding to the first skin portion; identifying one or more first keypoints within the first skin mask, wherein each first keypoint comprises an abnormality on a first body region within the first skin portion; receiving a second image data from an image capture device, wherein the second image data includes a second body region within a second skin portion, and wherein the first and second image data are sequentially captured; and comparing the first and second body regions of the first and second image data to match the skin mask of the first and second image data.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A method of monitoring skin abnormalities on a skin portion of a patient, comprising the steps of:
 receiving a first image data from an image capture device, wherein the first image data includes the first skin portion;   identifying a first skin mask corresponding to the first skin portion;   identifying one or more first keypoints within the first skin mask, wherein each first keypoint comprises an abnormality on a first body region within the first skin portion;   receiving a second image data from an image capture device, wherein the second image data includes a second body region within a second skin portion, and wherein the first and second image data are sequentially captured; and   comparing the first and second body regions of the first and second image data to match the skin mask of the first and second image data.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein an abnormality is one of a pigmented lesion. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the step of determining one or more second keypoints within the second skin mask, wherein each second keypoint comprises an abnormality on the skin portion. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the first keypoint is determined using a blob detection method. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the first keypoint is determined using the Laplacian-of-Gaussian filters. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 5 , wherein two or more of the first keypoints are duplicates, and duplicate keypoints are removed. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising the step of merging at least two keypoints. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 7 , wherein the at least two keypoints includes a first detection data and a second detection data, and
 wherein the step of merging includes obtaining a first cropped image of the first detection data, a second cropped image of the second detection data, and a third cropped image of the first and second detection data,   wherein the merging step comprises the step of performing a contour analysis of on each of the first, second, and third cropped images, and wherein if the third cropped image contains a single contour, the first and second detection data is merged.   
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the step of computing a geometrical property for each first and second keypoints. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 9 , wherein the geometrical property includes one or more of the following properties: height, width, perimeter, area, color distribution, and a dominant color. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein at least one of the steps of determining body landmarks, merging keypoint data, and matching keypoints is repeated.