Development of a Low-Intensity Light Imaging Probe for Childbirth Cervical Dilation Image Acquisition

Development of a Low-Intensity Light Imaging Probe for Childbirth Cervical Dilation Image Acquisition

Blog Article

Cervical dilation is the most important parameter that is assessed during childbirth to validate that a woman is truly in labour and whether labour is progressing as expected.It is the opening of a mother’s cervix from when it is closed at 0 cm to when it is fully dilated at 10 cm, for the baby to pass through and be delivered.The cervix is a cylinder-shaped tissue click here that connects the uterus to the vagina.Cervical dilation is majorly assessed through a highly subjective, painful, error-prone, and infection-prone Vaginal Examination method.

The method involves a doctor or midwife wearing sterilized gloves and inserting his or her fingers through the vagina to manually assess cervical dilation and mentally visualize it.Hence, in this research, a acupatch prototype of a novel low-intensity light imaging probe was developed to acquire images of cervical dilation simulation models for further processing and analysis.The probe was designed with 3D computer-aided design software.Finite element analysis was carried out on the design before it was rapid prototyped.

Then, a camera and a light source were inserted into the probe to capture 2,880 cervical dilation images in low-light intensities of 28 Lux and 50 Lux, due to the penetration depth of bright light intensity and heat into tissues.Image preprocessing was carried out on the images by applying a low-light image enhancement technique.This research demonstrated the use of a low-intensity light imaging probe as a possible objective alternative to the subjective insertion of fingers in vaginal examination.