Quantitative Assessment of Telangiectasia Whitening: A Standardized Image Analysis Approach for Evaluating Treatment Efficacy

The treatment of superficial chronic venous insufficiency (telangiectasias) requires a detailed evaluation to determine the appropriate treatment plan, including selecting a thermal or chemical method, quantifying medication dosage, potency, and energy, and subsequent assessment of therapy effectiveness. Digital photography has been widely used for patient evaluation and documentation, but visual comparison for image analysis is subject to inaccuracies and subjectivity, requiring more precise and accurate tools. Here, we propose a method to automate the quantitative analysis of whitening in telangiectasias post-treatment. We evaluated 26 digital images of telangiectasias before and after sclerotherapy treatment, processed in three stages: image standardization, affected area segmentation, and quantification of chromatic content indicative of pre and post-treatment evolution. The proposed method demonstrated high accuracy and reproducibility in quantifying the degree of whitening in telangiectasias before and after sclerotherapy treatment, suggesting its potential as a reliable tool for objective assessment of treatment effectiveness.