Toward Camera-Based Monitoring of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (AAAs)

We evaluate the applicability of simple optical measurements of humans’ abdomens to monitor pulse propagation as a possible means to monitor the development of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) in patients. The setup consists of a single high-speed camera and a mirror that enables a second viewing angle captured by the same image sensor. This setup thus allows for 3D measurements of the motions on the patient’s body surface. Subsequent signal processing is a crucial step to extract meaningful data from measurements containing many disturbances such as sensor noise or motion induced by breathing. We demonstrate that the relatively simple test setup is capable of recording clean data of the abdomen’s vibrations. Also, we show that breathing can only be removed from the signals to a certain extent with a simple high-pass filter and make suggestions on how to evaluate the flow speed based on the signals’ delay downstream on the skin.