A study on hemoglobin feature extraction from hyperspectral images and anemia estimation

Anemia is one of the most common social problems, as one in ten people is said to be anemic. There are several methods to diagnose anemia, such as color observation of the eyelid conjunctiva and blood sampling, but both require specialized knowledge and are not easy to perform in terms of both time and cost. <br/> In this paper, we propose a new method for estimating anemia from facial images captured by a hyperspectral camera. First, the spectrum of the eyelid conjunctiva region is obtained from the hyperspectral image. Next, the hemoglobin concentration is estimated by finding the ratio of reflectance in a specific wavelength band. <br/>Experiments with different water contents of blood-like samples confirmed the possibility of concentration estimation.