Cheap color evaluation of dye-based pressure sensitive films for plantar studies

Abstract

Dye-based pressure sensitive films are advantageous in plantar pressure studies due to their of ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and ability to produce measurements within the shoe. To circumvent the use of proprietary equipment and software to relate the dye stained film to load, an alternative approach of using a conventional flatbed scanner and generic image processing software is attempted here instead. The technique revealed high linear increasing and decreasing trends for the respective red and blue normalized intensities (correlation coefficient > 0.95) and low standard deviation in all readings (< 0.06) overall. By subtracting the blue from the red normalized intensity, it was discovered that the measurement sensitivity could be doubled. The results here confirm the viability of using a conventional flatbed scanner and generic image processing software to relate the dye stained pressure films to load. The adoption of this approach promises substantial cost savings.