Medical imaging has become the new normal, and care delivers are unleashing its full potential to build legit wound treatment strategies.
FREMONT, CA: Infections are one of the most severe wound-related complications. Essential elements of efficient wound treatment are strategies enabling infection prevention. Acute wounds combined with aging populations and the incidence of increasing chronic conditions could be challenging for healthcare deliverers. Wounds can become chronic and even cause death if not correctly attended. Wounds are a significant cause of trauma in the field of cosmetics and plastic reconstructive surgery, which require adequate diagnosis that can help the doctors in suggesting a suitable therapy. Here are a few latest advances in optical methods that have been implemented either non-invasively or hold potential in this respect to assess skin wound-related issues.
Wearable Bio-Sensors
Biosensor technology is exponentially progressing. The technologically feasible development of versatile biosensors capable of tracking physiological data and helping with appropriate therapy while laminating the device on the skin or an organ is due to present advances in the field. Through multiple microfabrication processes, flexible sensors are manufactured to produce a slender, stretchable, and flexible device that is mechanically consistent with the biological system's curvilinear surface. Like wound dressings, the biosensor design for wound surveillance needs to be biocompatible, allow free flow of liquid and gas, flexible and stretchable. The choice of substratum material, macro, and substratum microstructure for an optimum wound sensor are, therefore, essential for optimized decision-making.
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)
NIRS is based on two principles: one is that tissue is comparatively transparent to near-infrared light, and light absorption based on the tissue's oxygenation status is the second. The propagation of light in tissue relies on the photons' mixture of the characteristics of absorption, dispersion, and reflection. Weak perfusion or ischemia in delayed wound healing is often complicit. Given the significance of healthy blood supply and venous drainage to and from injuries, multiple NIR-based methods for measuring local blood flow or perfusion have been created.
ICG Angiography
The necessity to inject a dye represents a substantial defect in Indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence angiography when positioning the technology as a routine wound monitoring device. To visualize perfusion, non-invasive solutions seem to suit better for the role. Laser speckle is generated on a non-specular scattering goal when a consistent source occurs. ICG is a widely used exogenous fluorescence dye that can be situated in the systemic circulation, enabling vascularization imaging and in-depth determination.
Laser Doppler Imaging (LDI)
Laser light is used in LDI to illuminate the part of the tissue, and the backscattered and reflected light is gathered to picture any moving object within the section of the tissue. Based on the Doppler shift exhibited by shifting blood cells, this method can be used to calculate blood flow through the superficial skin layer. It helps measure blood perfusion unit, which can be implemented during wound healing to extract helpful functional data to evaluate angiogenesis and endothelial function.
Orthogonal Polarization Spectral Imaging (OPSI)
OPSI utilizes linear polarized light to illuminate the skin tissue and capture the emerging depolarized light dispersed by the skin parts through an orthogonally placed analyzer to the light polarization illumination plane. Hemoglobin can be visualized in microcirculation to quantify the microvasculature during cutaneous wound healing by analyzing the depolarized light.
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
OCT is a method of biomedical imaging that has better resolution than ultrasound and achieves greater penetration than confocal microscopy and can provide unique morphological data over bigger tissue areas than nonlinear optical microscopy. The OCT signal is generated by overlapping various backscattered optical areas, resulting in accompanying speckle noise. Coherent speckle noise is unwanted in anatomical OCT imaging as it can obscure structural characteristics.
The versatile optical modalities mentioned here have their meaning in evaluating particular wound-related issues. These optical methods can tackle a broad range of skin wound-related problems by judicially mixing different contrasts from the skin components. Wound management depends on the location and features of the wound. No single strategy can be applied to all injuries; however, the framework of outstanding wound management is provided by a systematic approach to wound care integrated with best tech practices.
