The program EPC/GDV Screening is designed for analysis of functional state of subjects by calculation of complex EPC/GDVparameters of organs and body systems and for their comparison with reference parameters of a practically healthy person. The program calculates numerical characteristics, such as integral area, integral entropy and activation coefficient of separate organs and systems. The program has a well-developed means to carry our visual analysis of EPC/GDV-images in sectors referring to the selected organ or body system, and also for monitoring the numerical parameters corresponding to these sectors. To carry out the analysis you need to load into the program static EPC/GDV-images of 10 fingers taken with and without special filter.

Price: 580 Euro

Working procedure

The program can simultaneously carry out the data processing for several subjects with a possibility of having several EPC/GDVcaptures for each of them (e.g., taken on different dates). A EPC/GDV capture is one or two sets of files of EPC/GDV-images of fingers taken with and without filter.

The list of captures and personal data of the subject (name, gender, age, etc.) are saved in the file or on the disk. Therefore to process the subject’s data it is necessary either to create a new file, or to download the previously created one and then add the new capture. When you want to close the program or delete subjects from the list, a request will be made if you need to save all changes during this séance.

Thus a typical working procedure looks as follows:

 

1. Create a new file or download the existing one.
2. Add the new capture.
3. Download the subject’s EPC/GDV-images with and without filter.
4. Calibration (if this procedure has not been carried out before).
5. Check settings of noise filtration, pseudocoloring mode, and if necessary, introduce your corrections
6. Corrections of inner ellipses.
7. Analysis of functional state by organs and systems.
8. Analysis of numerical parameters of organs and systems.
9. Creating a table of numerical data.
10. Building comparative diagrams of numerical parameters of organs and systems.

Data table

The Data table contains all numerical data of organs and systems. If several captures are loaded into the program, above the table you can select the subject and capture for whom the table is displayed. You can also select the type of EPC/GDV-images for which the parameter tables is built (with or without filter).

The table has eight columns. The first one shows the systems and organs related to a particular sector, the second and third ones show the data about the glow area of the right and left hands, respectively. The fourth column calculates the average area; the fifth one shows the difference between the glow areas of the right and left hands. The sixth and seventh ones show entropy and the eighth one – the activation coefficient. The numerical data corresponding to norm are shown in green, below norm in red and above it in yellow. It is done for the convenience of viewing the table and possibility to determine which organs and systems are worth paying attention to.

Noise filtration

The window Noise filter parameters is opened using the button Noise in the upper part of the Dynamic EPC/GDV-images page.

A EPC/GDV-image is a number of points (pixels) each of which is characterized by the glow intensity – a value within 0 - 255. Zero intensity corresponds to the absence of glow in the given point, and 255 indicate maximal glow intensity.

The EPC/GDV-image spectrum is the function that determines the number of points with specified intensity. Fig. shows a typical EPC/GDV-image spectrum. The horizontal axis shows the intensity and the vertical one the number of image pixels with preset intensity. Any video camera used to register EPC/GDV-images has a certain error of performance. Therefore the images contain evenly spread “noise” points of low intensity. The figure shows the part of spectrum corresponding to there noise pixels in grey. The blue color indicates the spectral region corresponding to the brightest and most informative point of gas discharge glow around the subject.

The video camera performance error is not the only noise contribution to EPC/GDV-images; it also may be dirt on the work surface of the instrument. It may result in separate bright spots or fragments that also should be filtered.

As a result, noise filtration of EPC/GDV-images is carried out in two stages. First, you need to remove pixels whose intensity is equal or less than a certain limit. There are two ways of setting this limit:

1. The limit is set directly– a corresponding parameter of the program is called «absolute noise level»;
2. The limit is determined automatically for each image by a certain characteristic of the EPC/GDV-image spectrum.

The latter method is regulated by the two parameters – «relative noise level» and «basic intensity». A relative noise level determines the percentage of the limit value for filtration calculated from the selected basic intensity.

There are 5 options of basic intensities:

Average – an average intensity calculated by analysis of all points of image.
Average + RMS – an average intensity of all points of image plus standard intensity deviation.
Median – a median of the image points intensities.
Peak – the most frequently met intensity value.
Threshold – a value exceeding the intensity peak (the number of pixels containing this value is less than 1% of the total amount of image points).


At the second stage of filtration a list of image fragments is built – groups of glow pixels situated nearby (the principle of 8-connectedness is used: two points are neighboring if their coordinate values have not more than one-unit difference, i.e., the neighboring of the given points are those being in one of the eight nearby positions) For each fragment the area is calculated, i.e., the number of pixels in it. Then you need to remove from the GDV-image all fragments whose area is smaller than the specified one. It is regulated by the parameter «minimal fragment area». The value of this parameter is 10 by default and usually does not require any changes.


For the convenience of processing EPC/GDV-images of liquids (that may splash during a discharge), and also if there is edge flare (external lighting), another parameter has been introduced, - the  «working radius». If this parameter is non-zero, all pixels whose distance to the glow center exceeds the specified value are removed. 

It should be emphasized that during the filtration procedure there is no physical removal of information from images, all further calculations in the program are done as if all filtered pixels had zero intensity. Therefore you can change the noise filtration parameters any time, not losing the data on noise pixels.


The noise filtration parameters settings are carried out by the user. The two main factors to select these parameters are the type of the used EPC/GDVCamera and specific features of the recorded EPC/GDV-images. In the Operation Manual to the EPC/GDVCamera you will find the recommendations helping to determine the correct parameter values. You need to follow the principle of selecting the most contrast part of the glow that can usually be seen with a naked eye. It is also important (when you are registering the test object images) to ensure such filtration parameters that the inner part of the glow would not contain noise pixels.  For the convenience of selecting optimal parameters of noise filtration the program can switch to different types of image pseudocoloring.

You can use the following way to control the correctness of the chosen parameters:

1. Set the «intensive» or «energy» palette for loaded images.
2. Select the noise filtration parameters so that to avoid a large number of yellow dots.
3. Switch to the «initial image» palette.
4. Switch off the display of the filtered points.
5. Make sure that the visible peculiarities of the subject’s glow have not disappeared from the screen.
6. Switch to the «monotonous palette».
7. Make sure that the bright-blue dots do not fill the entire or almost entire glow area.
8. If necessary, repeat the procedure.

Naturally, the procedure of selecting the parameters is done only once using several samples of EPC/GDV-images of fingers and EPC/GDV-images of the test object captured with the given EPC/GDV Camera.

Several parameters of noise filtering are offered in the program:

Absolute noise level – removal of all the image points whose intensity is lower or equal to the given noise level. It is recommended to select the value individually for each session of recording within the limits from 10 to 60.

Relative noise level (%) – the program automatically selects absolute noise level on the basis of the given percent of the value of base intensity. This algorithm selects the level of noise for each EPC/GDV-image frame individually. Base intensity is calculated on the basis of the analysis of histogram of image spectrum. Statistical characteristics of spectrum are taken as the values of base intensity. These characteristics correspond to the spectrum average value plus the value of its RMS, average value of spectrum, median of spectrum or peak of spectrum.

Minimal fragment area – removal of fragments of glow with the glow area less than the given minimal area of fragment.  

Working radius – removal of all points of the image whose distance from which to the glow center is bigger than the given working radius. The glow center is either calculated automatically, as the center of gravity of all the glow points, or set by the user after manual correction of the glow center. The same value of coordinates of the glow center is used for all the frames of video file.

Intensity correction  – the intensity of  all pixels of a EPC/GDV image increases or decreases by the same value that is automatically calculated by the program, so as to bring the characteristics of the image spectrum most closely to the characteristics of the spectrum of test object EPC/GDV images taken during calibration.

System requirements

The program can be operated in the following Microsoft Windows operating systems:

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP

Recommended computer configuration:

• Processor - P 4 or higher
• Memory - 256 Mb or more
• HDD free space - 5 Gb or more

EPC/GDV SOFTWARE: EPC/GDV CAPTURE,  EPC/GDV ENERGY FIELD,  EPC/GDV DIAGRAM,  EPC/GDV CHAKRA,  EPC/GDV SCILAB,  EPC/GDV SCREENING,  EPC/GDV VIEWER ,  EPC/GDV QUALIFICATION