Clinical and Thermographic Database of Patients with Diabetes Mellitus with Perspective for Quantitative Studies

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic degenerative disease suffered by 9.3% per year worldwide. In Mexico, 9.17% are currently diagnosed with diabetes, in which 30% have experienced complications such as diabetic foot. In this sense, early diagnosis could decrease the morbidity statistics arising from a diabetic foot that is not properly managed. However, some techniques employed for early diagnosis are based on medical imaging, e.g., medical IR thermography. Therefore, this paper presents a prelude for a clinical application based on medical IR thermography in which physiological data was retrieved from patients among thermographs in order to correlate variables as a perspective study. The database structure contains the obtained thermal images, which data processing is performed to filter and segment them to clearly observe the risk areas, in addition to some physiological parameters such as vital signs and the percentage of glycated hemoglobin in order to have knowledge of the patient's physical condition. The study was carried out in 55 patients, 58% of which belonged to diabetic patients, in which patients with a diagnosis of diabetic foot with classifications 1, 2 and 4 on the Wagner scale. The information gathered in this study has the perspective of finding applications in quantitative studies (e.g., classification) that correlate physiological variables and thermograms in patients with a history of diabetes mellitus.