Diagnostic and Prognostic Utility of Non-Invasive Multimodal Imaging in Chronic Wound Monitoring: a Systematic Review

Abstract

Monitoring chronic wound [CW] healing is a challenging issue for clinicians across the world. Moreover, the health and cost burden of CW are escalating at a disturbing rate due to a global rise in population of elderly and diabetic cases. The conventional approach includes visual contour, sketches, or more rarely tracings. However, such conventional techniques bring forth infection, pain, allergies. Furthermore, these methods are subjective as well as time-consuming. As such, nowadays, non-touching and non-invasive CW monitoring system based on imaging techniques are gaining importance. They not only reduce patients' discomfort but also provide rapid wound diagnosis and prognosis. This review provides a survey of different types of CW characteristics, their healing mechanism and the multimodal non-invasive imaging methods that have been used for their diagnosis and prognosis. Current clinical practices as well as personal health systems [m-health and e-health] for CW monitoring have been discussed.

Diagnostic accuracy in thermographic imaging for granulation of uninfected diabetic ulcers

“…Una revisión sistemática concluyó que las técnicas de imagen no invasiva tales como fotográfica digital , imagen hiperespectral, la imagen termográfica, imagen doppler láser , microscopia con focal y otras tienen inmenso potencial para evaluar las cicatrización de la úlceras crónicas en progreso y severidad sobre el tiempo 7 .La termografía infrarroja médica es una técnica de imagen que estudia la fisiopatología térmica humana como método diagnóstico que capta y registra la energía térmica electromagnética infrarroja emitida por el cuerpo humano por radiación y que lo trasforma en señal electrónica de imagen, que son amplificados a un monitor en tonos de color según magnitud 8 . Una revisión narrativa afirma que "la termografía infrarroja ha sido usada exitosamente en detectar las complicaciones relacionadas al pie diabético debido a que es rápida, sin contacto, no invasiva y permite visualizar la distribución de la temperatura del pie" 9 .…”

Development of Computer Vision Applications to Automate the Measurement of the Dimensions of Skin Wounds

“…Biomedical applications have great potential in the field of geomatics, since techniques such as photogrammetry and remote sensing can be used as supplementary tests for various measurements, which are useful in the clinical follow-up of patients and in research [1][2][3][4][5].…”

Design and evaluation of an imager for assessing wound inflammatory responses and bioburden in a pig model

“…[3][4][5] However, traditional wound healing diagnostic techniques rely on wound size and volume measurements, which have been found to have poor accuracy. 6,7 On the other hand, wound bacterial infection and infiltration (also referred to as bioburden) have been well established to delay wound healing. 8 Wound infection diagnosis (typically via a swab culture) is timeconsuming and requires access to a specialized facility.…”