High-density Baropodometry Platform Based on Vision Based Tactile Sensing

Abstract

Plantar pressure distribution measurement is significant for healthy monitoring and disease diagnosis. However, existing equipment lack of high-density resolution and may lead under-diagnosed of small abnormal regions. To address problem, we propose a special high resolution and low cost Baropodometry based on vision based tactile sensing (VBTS). Specially, we design a measurement platform with larger-scale sensing range (280 mm x 150 mm) and high-density resolution (440 ppi). To achieve the homogeneous illumination for the measure area, we also propose normally distributed light sources around the platform, and delicately adjust the incident angle to optimize the reconstruction performance. Besides, we design a example-based method to calibrate the platform and build a look-up table to reconstruct the plantar geometry from observed image. Experiments show the high lateral resolution that can discriminate the details (<2 mm), and the depth measurement accuracy is 68.5%. The experiments of reconstruction of plantar pressure depth map and identification of tumours show its' advantage for providing adaptive high-resolution plantar topography and pressure measurement.