預測女性排卵期可應用在避孕、受孕、疾病診斷和不孕症治療。以往 預測女性排卵期常用方法，大都需要藉助專業知識或精密設備輔助才能採 集檢測。近年研究發現，在排卵前雌激素分泌達高峰時，乾燥後的唾液會 呈現出典型羊齒狀結晶(Ferning)，唾液結晶會隨著生理週期而發生明顯的 規律性變化，隨著排卵期的接近，分為無羊齒狀結晶、部分羊齒狀結晶以 及典型羊齒狀結晶。正確辨識女性是否處於排卵期，除了可幫助女性更加 了解自己的身體，更在避孕、計畫生育、治療疾病、降低青少女意外懷孕 等方面具有重要的正向幫助。 本計畫規劃以兩年期程執行，由中山醫學大學醫學資訊學系、中山醫 學大學附設醫院婦產部與中山醫學大學醫學社會暨社會工作學系共同合 作研發【基於唾液影像樣式辨識之女性排卵期預測行動照護系統】。本研 究預計使用 60 倍手持式顯微鏡結合有照相功能的手機獲取唾液影像樣 本，並運用影像處理技術進行唾液影像樣式自動辨識演算法的開發驗證， 並將進一步開發完成手機辨識服務系統，透過手機的移動性及可攜性，使 用者可立即知道辨識結果。本研究開發的系統具有簡單、快速、經濟、可 重複性、易於掌握且無副作用等優點，期能提供一套促進婦女健康及有助 於青少女正確性健康自主管理的行動照護系統。 Predict woman's ovulation can sterility treatment, diagnose certain diseases and avoid undesired pregnancies. Most previous methods require sophisticated equipment or medical expertise aided to collect data for predicting woman’s ovulation period. Saliva ferning is a recent technique that monitors woman's saliva and looks for patterns related to ovulation. With different ovulation approaches, the saliva ferning will be divided into non-crystalline fern crystals, partially crystalline and typical ferning crystals. Correctly identify women’s ovulation period not only help women understand their bodies, but also have important positive help in contraception, birth control, treatment of disease, and reducing unwanted pregnancies of teenagers. This project is scheduled in two years. It is a joint cooperative research by the department of medical informatics of CSMU, the department of obstetrics and gynecology of CSMU hospital and the department of medical sociology and social work to develop a mobile healthcare system for woman's ovulation prediction using saliva image recognition. Saliva is inspected under a microscope for crystallization patterns. First, we use a digital camera with a hand-held 60x optical microscope to take saliva images. Second, we propose an image-processing algorithm for automatic recognize the most important features in saliva images. Finally, we develop a saliva image recognition application system for any mobile devices. The proposed system can predict woman's ovulation more safe, natural, convenient and efficient.
