I-Corps: Smartphone oxygenation tool for wound care

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a smartphone-based optical imaging technology to assess wound healing. The proposed technology provides enhanced patient assessment using oxygenation levels to increase the standard of care in the wound care domain (including diabetic foot ulcers, chronic wounds, acute wounds, post-surgery plastic surgery skin flaps, and other applications in this wound domain).

In the long-term, the technology also may facilitate remote patient monitoring, improve patient compliance, minimize the need for amputations, and expand the availability of modern wound care monitoring to communities with health care disparities. Increasing costs of health care, an aging population, recognition of difficult-to-treat infection threats, and the continued increase of diabetes and obesity worldwide make chronic wounds a substantial clinical, social, and economic challenge.

The proposed technology may have a positive impact by objectively assessing wound treatment progression.

This I-Corps project is based on the development a smartphone-based imaging technology to be used as a handheld, telemedicine oxygenation device for wound care prognosis of diabetic foot ulcers and other wounds. Current mobile health-based diabetic foot ulcer assessment using a mobile phone’s digital color images provides only minimal clinical assessment in terms of visual wound coloration, size (or area), and depth measurement characteristics.

The proposed technology is designed to acquire digital photographs of wounds, measure wound size/area, and obtain tissue oxygenation maps of the wounds. The device is the only non-intrusive smartphone optical imaging device that measures 2-dimensional oxygenation changes of tissues apart from obtaining digital color images. The use of a smartphone makes the device user friendly and light enough for off premise use in multiple examinations per day.

The preliminary studies on diabetic foot ulcers demonstrated that the proposed device could differentiate the physiological contrast between the wound and its surroundings, apart from obtaining digital color images of the wound. In addition, a smartphone-based app is under development to allow data analysis and immediate display of digital color images and oxygenation maps to the clinicians during imaging.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.