A health care information system for neonatology support

The determination of gestational age in newborn children is fundamental to the evaluation of their survival possibilities. In many cases, when the qualified pre-natal attendance has not occurred, the post-birth evaluation of the gestational age becomes the only alternative. This paper presents a medical image retrieval system whose goal is to help to confirm a new method (called FootScan) for gestational age determination, through the digital image of the dermatoglyphics from the plantar (sole of the foot) region of the newborn. The system includes a level of knowledge, associated with the database, which stores information from the patients, together with image features and their logical relationships.