Multimodal and Multispectral Imaging for Chronic Pressure Ulcer Assessment

The wound care management is critical for patients with chronic ulcers, and many treatments have been proposed to facilitate the recovery. We propose to use four optical imaging technologies, polarizing visible light, 650nm red light, 940nm near infrared, and 8-12μm long wave thermal infrared imaging, to monitor the ulcer status. Detailed imaging setup is reported and the preliminary results show that several physiological features can be extracted via the multimodal imaging. More clinical data will be collected to establish sufficient statistics to determine the prognostic biomarkers. The goal of such imaging and feature extraction is to indicate whether an ulcer is developing, infected, or recovered before significantly visible change appears.