Research Article Quantitative Estimation of Temperature Variations in Plantar Angiosomes: A Study Case for Diabetic Foot H. Peregrina-Barreto, 1 L. A. Morales-Hernandez, 2 J. J. Rangel-Magdaleno, 1 J. G. Avina-Cervantes, 3 J. M. Ramirez-Cortes, 1 and R. Morales-Caporal 4 1 Instituto Nacional de Astrof´ ısica, ´ Optica y Electr´ onica, Luis Enrique Erro No. 1, 72840 Tonantzintla, PUE, Mexico 2 Universidad Aut´ onoma de Quer´ etaro, Cerro de las Campanas S/N, 76010 Quer´ etaro, QRO, Mexico 3 Divisi´ on de Ingenier´ ıas del Campus Irapuato-Salamanca, Universidad de Guanajuato, Carretera Salamanca-Valle de Santiago Km 3.5+1.8, Comunidad de Palo Blanco, 36885 Salamanca, GTO, Mexico 4 Instituto Tecnol´ ogico de Apizaco, Avenida Instituto Tecnol´ ogico, 90300 Apizaco, TLAX, Mexico Correspondence should be addressed to H. Peregrina-Barreto; peregrina.barreto.hayde@gmail.com Received 6 October 2013; Accepted 2 January 2014; Published 13 February 2014 Academic Editor: Volkhard Helms Copyright © 2014 H. Peregrina-Barreto et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. hermography is a useful tool since it provides information that may help in the diagnostic of several diseases in a noninvasive and fast way. Particularly, thermography has been applied in the study of the diabetic foot. However, most of these studies report only qualitative information making it diicult to measure signiicant parameters such as temperature variations. hese variations are important in the analysis of the diabetic foot since they could bring knowledge, for instance, regarding ulceration risks. he early detection of ulceration risks is considered an important research topic in the medicine ield, as its objective is to avoid major complications that might lead to a limb amputation. he absence of symptoms in the early phase of the ulceration is conceived as the main disadvantage to provide an opportune diagnostic in subjects with neuropathy. Since the relation between temperature and ulceration risks is well established in the literature, a methodology that obtains quantitative temperature diferences in the plantar area of the diabetic foot to detect ulceration risks is proposed in this work. Such methodology is based on the angiosome concept and image processing. 1. Introduction Infrared (IR) technology allows the capture of natural heat radiation from the human body and its representation in a thermal image (thermogram) [1]. Since this heat radiation is produced by a thermal exchange process among skin tissue, inner tissue, local vasculature, and metabolic activity, the resulting temperature distribution could provide information regarding several diseases [1–3]. In diabetes mellitus cases, it is widely known that there is a high risk of complications in the foot; moreover, several studies have been focused in the analysis and characterization of its temperature. Some studies suggest a constant inspection of feet temperature in order to know how it behaves in diabetic patients [4, 5]. In addition, some reports have established that there are important diferences of temperature in the plantar region between healthy and diabetic subjects with and without neu- ropathic damage [6, 7]. According to several investigations, the presence of hot regions in the plantar area may indicate tissue damage, inlammation, and arteriovenous shunting, which could compromise the nutritive capillary low and increase the predisposition to cutaneous ulceration [8–10]. For instance, Br˚ anemark et al. [11] found that diabetic patients present abnormal temperature patterns in feet and hands associated to common ulceration regions in a study made by using IR. Recently, Bharara et al. [12] proposed an analysis based on the thermal proile of a foot wound in order to provide a healing wound index for diabetic subjects. In fact, IR technology application has even been used to determine the required amputation level [13]. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine Volume 2014, Article ID 585306, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/585306