METHOD AND INSTRUMENT FOR MEASURING SEBACEOUS GLAND FUNCTION

PURPOSE:To facilitate the judgment of dividing and fusing and to allow rapid and exact measurement of areas and to obtain the index to evaluate the functions of the sebaceous gland by forming the superposed image of the contours of a part to be dyed and an original image. CONSTITUTION:The value of the picture elements of the region of a prescribed area or below among the regions where the picture elements attaining 0 value gather on the binary image is substd. with 255, by which the noise in the background is removed and thereafter, the region superposed on the frame of a screen is removed. The picture elements arranged to a matrix form of 3X3 as a unit are successively scanned and only the contours are extracted by substitution. The contours and the original picture are superposed on each other. If there is the point requiring the division of the region enclosed by each of the contours, a segment X is set at this point and the value of the picture elements of the binary image on this segment is substd. with 255, by which both are divided. If there is the point requiring fusion, a segment Y is set at this point and the value of the binary image on this segment is substd. to 0 to connect both. The area of the black region in the binary image is calculated. The area of the sebaceous gland is thus obtd.