Zeitschrift für Bioverarbeitung und Biotechnik

Imaging Techniques used for Wound Healing Assessment

Abstract

Poh Hong Tan

Aim: The purpose of this study is to provide a short description of the performance of various non-invasive Imaging techniques used for wound healing assessment described in the literature.

Objective: Assessment of wounds carries both prognostic and diagnostic value thus determines treatment strategies and objectively examines the efficacy of emerging and novel wound therapies. Therefore, the aim of this article is to evaluate several objective imaging based wound assessment techniques.

Methods: Electronic databases were searched for all available publications on the use of wound assessment devices on human and artificial wounds using appropriate search terms. The primary outcome was the reliability and reproducibility of measurement whilst the secondary outcome was the feasibility of the instrument. All studies underwent Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS) to examine the quality of data.

Results: Forty-four articles were identified evaluating 11 instruments which were divided acute wound measuring devices and chronic wound measuring devices. Average QUADAS score was 11 with lowest at 9 and highest 14. The highest performing instrument for acute wound healing was multi-photon tomography. It provides morphological assessment at a histological level, and details physiological status through optical redox ratio auto-fluorescence. However, its current high cost would therefore limit its use to research rather than clinical setting. The 3D system is ideal for wound assessment of chronic wounds. The combination of portability and ease of use outperforms hyper-spectral imaging, OCT and MPT, whilst its accuracy is superior to 2D imaging.

Discussion/Conclusion: This was an article which compared the performance of instruments for chronic and acute wounds. The article provides an extension into three further articles which provide a more in-depth review of the performances of the described instrument.