| Objective and accurate surface measurements are important in many clinical disciplines. Non-irradiating and low cost alternatives are available but validation of these measurement tools for clinical application is variable and sparse. This thesis presents a three dimensional (3D) surface measurement method validated by gold standard Computed Tomography (CT). Forty-one 3D surface data sets were acquired by two modalities, a laser scanner and a binocular camera. The binocular camera was tested with three different texture modifiers that increased the colour variability of the imaged surface. A surface area calculation algorithm was created to process the data sets. Relative differences were calculated for each area measurement with respect to its corresponding CT measurement. The laser scanner data sets were affected by movement and specular reflection artefacts. The measurements were statistically equivalent to CT if less than 20% error were considered acceptable. The binocular camera with the slide projected texture modifier was shown to be statistically equivalent to CT gold standard with less than 5% error (p < 0.0005). The surface area measurement method can easily be expanded and customized. By following the protocol outlined by the example in this work, researchers and clinicians would also be able to objectively asses other vision systems' performance and suitability. |
