Guidelines for smartphone usage in telemedical photography

Abstract: The wide usage of smartphones makes them an interesting and potential medical device. Given that smartphone cameras have a sufficiently high quality - some of the medical photography done at health care facilities could be done telemedically and by non-medically educated per- sons. Therefore a research of the quality of the photos taken with smartphone cameras has been done. This thesis presents guidelines regarding how inexperienced persons could take high qualitative medical photos with a smartphone. This thesis includes a review of current guidelines within medical photography. A compari- son between two popular smartphones and a professional medical camera has been done - where possibilities and limitations in smartphone cameras have been identified. In order to evaluate the sharpness and the color temperature representation in the photos taken with smartphones, an experiment with realistic lighting and easy accessible color-calibration cards has been done. The execution and the achieved result have formed the basis of the proposed guidelines. The result shows that smartphone cameras are of high quality and thereby could be used as a complement to advanced medical camera equipment. With the help of the proposed guidelines inexperienced persons could acquire sufficiently good medical photos, in order to be used as diagnostic material. This thesis provides a foundation for further research and implementation within the area, with the purpose of becoming an important part of the efficiency improvement within the telemedical health care.