0000000000371001
AUTHOR
Eva ŠTruc
Agreement between body surface and rectal temperature in cats
Measuring body temperature in cats is an essential part of every clinical examination. Typically, rectal temperature measurement is conducted, but the procedure is poorly tolerated, and it often triggers stress-related changes in physiological parameters like pulse rate and blood pressure. Therefore, non-contact infrared thermometers have been studied on a few body surface measurement sites. However, existing studies included only commercial thermometers, which do not guarantee the correct temperature readings. In this study, we applied a custom-made and calibrated infrared thermometer for measuring feline body surface temperature on easily-accessible measurement sites of the eye, gum, and …
Accuracy of an Affordable Smartphone-Based Teledermoscopy System for Color Measurements in Canine Skin
Quality smartphone cameras and affordable dermatoscopes have enabled teledermoscopy to become a popular medical and veterinary tool for analyzing skin lesions such as melanoma and erythema. However, smartphones acquire images in an unknown RGB color space, which prevents a standardized colorimetric skin analysis. In this work, we supplemented a typical veterinary teledermoscopy system with a conventional color calibration procedure, and we studied two mid-priced smartphones in evaluating native and erythematous canine skin color. In a laboratory setting with the ColorChecker, the teledermoscopy system reached CIELAB-based color differences &Delta
Evaluation of Erythema Severity in Dermatoscopic Images of Canine Skin: Erythema Index Assessment and Image Sampling Reliability.
The regular monitoring of erythema, one of the most important skin lesions in atopic (allergic) dogs, is essential for successful anti-allergic therapy. The smartphone-based dermatoscopy enables a convenient way to acquire quality images of erythematous skin. However, the image sampling to evaluate erythema severity is still done manually, introducing result variability. In this study, we investigated the correlation between the most popular erythema indices (EIs) and dermatologists’ erythema perception, and we measured intra- and inter-rater variability of the currently-used manual image-sampling methods (ISMs). We showed that the EIBRG, based on all three RGB (red, green, and blue) channe…
Photoplethysmography in dogs and cats: a selection of alternative measurement sites for a pet monitor.
Objective Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an increasingly popular health and well-being tool for monitoring heart rate and oxygen saturation. Due to the pigmentation and hairiness of dogs and cats, a pulse oximeter is routinely placed solely on the tongue. As this approach is feasible only for pet monitor use during surgical procedures, we investigate PPG signal quality on several other measurement sites that would be better tolerated by conscious animals. Approach Acquired PPG signals are analyzed by four signal quality indices: mean baseline, signal power, kurtosis, and tolerance score. Main results In dogs, the metacarpus and tail can be substituted for oral pulse oximeter placement since …
Clinical evaluation of automated capillary refill time estimation in dogs and cats
In this study, we clinically evaluated a pulse oximeter-based device for automated capillary refill time (CRT) estimation in dogs and cats. CRT can reveal conditions like shock or anemia in dogs and cats. However, visual CRT estimation has low repeatability, and the available optical systems for automated estimation are not suitable for pets. We evaluated a custom-made portable CRT measuring device on various measurement sites of 12 dogs and 11 cats with parallel visual CRT estimation on the gum by treating veterinarian. The capillary refill was also recorded by a video camera for reference. The visual and video procedures were moderately correlated with the coefficient of 0.61; visual CRT …
Selection of erythema index and image sampling method for the objective erythema estimation in dogs with atopic dermatitis
Canine atopic dermatitis (CAD) is a common inflammatory and pruritic skin disease associated with allergy to exogenous allergens. The regular monitoring of skin lesions is essential to execute the anti-allergic therapy successfully. Erythema is one of the most important CAD-related lesions since it represents acute skin inflammation. Previously, we studied two optical systems (i.e., multispectral and dermatoscopic devices), which could objectively estimate erythema severity. However, we did not investigate, which image sampling method for selecting erythema-representing pixels and erythema index (EI) are correlated with the visual erythema assessment the most. In this paper, we tested three…
Photoplethysmography for bovine heat detection: the preliminary results
In this study, we applied photoplethysmography (PPG) as an alternative, convenient, and affordable method for bovine heat detection. Heat detection is an essential part of effective herd reproduction management. Currently, there are many different heat detection techniques, but they can be ineffective or impractical to use. Since heat affects local vulvar blood circulation (resulting in swelling and erythema), photoplethysmography could represent an affordable alternative to detect this bovine phenomenon. In this study, we enrolled 20 animals in heat and other stages of the bovine reproduction cycle. We analyzed the PPG signal in terms of baseline (DC component), power, kurtosis, and erythe…
Photoplethysmography In Dogs And Cats: Selection Of Measurement Sites For Pet Monitor
The PPG measurements of the study Cugmas et al, 2018. Notes.txt include all information about the dataset.