Handheld 3-D Camera for Wound Healing Monitoring

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Every year, approximately 6 million Americans suffer from chronic wounds. A significant portion of wound patients with non-healing wounds are victims of diabetes. Non-healing wounds can persist for years, causing pain to patients and placing them at risk for secondary infections and loss of limb. Wound healing is a lengthy yet not well understood process. Careful monitoring the healing progress could help doctors to assess the efficacy of treatment procedure and determine right treatment early-on. However, there is no wound measurement tool available to facilitate quantitative, accurate, easy-to- use measurement of wound healing. The primary objective of this SBIR program is to develop a novel handheld 3D camera to perform objective, quantitative, and true 3D measurements of wounds (size, shape, volume, color, and healing status). Accurate measurement of wound healing will enable doctors to assess, improve, and individualize the treatment given to each wound patient. The major innovations of this proposed project include techniques to enable the miniaturization of 3D camera hardware, and sophisticated 3D image processing and measurement software. In the Phase I project, we propose to design and prototype handheld 3D camera hardware, and to develop several critical components of 3D wound measurement algorithms, such as automatic 3D image alignment and merge, reliable wound boundary segmentation, and quantitative wound comparison. We will work closely with our collaborators at Johns Hopkins Wound Center to collect feedback to our hardware/software design and perform preliminary tests in clinical wound treatment environment to validate our designs.