Visualization of venous compliance of superficial veins using non-contact plethysmography based on digital red-green-blue images

Abstract

We propose the visualization of venous compliance (VC) using a digital red-green-blue (RGB) camera. The new imaging method, which transforms RGB values into VC, combines VC evaluation with blood concentration estimation from the RGB values of each pixel. We evaluate a non-contact plethysmography (NCPG) system for VC based on comparisons with conventional strain gauge plethysmography (SPG). We conduct in vivo measurements using both systems and investigate their differences by evaluating the VC. The results show that the two methods measure different blood vessels and that errors caused by interstitial fluid accumulation are negligible for the NCPG system, whereas SPG is influenced by such errors. Additionally, we investigate the relationship between VC and physical activity using NCPG.