Patent ID: 7374536

Claim:
A method for identifying clinical characteristics of a patient's pain, comprising the steps of: a. providing a first human body image without pain indicia recorded thereon; b. providing a second human body image substantially similar to said first human body image other than having recorded thereon readable indicia of a first patient's pain, said indicia being recorded on said second human body image at locations in correspondence with locations of the first patient's actual pain; c. digitizing said first human body image and said second human body image if not already digitized; d. coregistering said first human body image and said second human body image; e. comparing electronically said first human body image and said second human body image to determine at least one set of contiguous electronic locations of said pain indicia; f. calculating a single point centroid based on locations of actual pain, said actual pain locations comprising a pain shape; g 1. using said single point centroid to allocate said pain shape to a given human body location; g 2. producing a database of said pain centroids for a plurality of patients known to belong to at least one clinical group identified by at least one of a diagnostic category or a disease severity category; h. comparing the first patient's pain centroid with said database; and i. judging based on said comparison if the first patient is included in at least one of said clinical groups.