CHALLENGE
Nearly 6.5 million patients in the U.S. suffer chronic wounds from causes such as burns, infections and complications from diabetes. The U.S. healthcare system spends $25 billion each year on treating wound-related complications.
Currently, physicians use clinical judgment to assess the depth and severity of a burn or infection, or must use invasive diagnostic tests that require biopsy. Studies show that even expert burn care specialists make an accurate assessment of burn depth only 70% of the time. Non-specialists have an even higher error rate.
With the rise of amputations performed every year resulting from diabetes complications and peripheral vascular disease (PVD), better methods are needed to assess the severity of wounds and make data-driven treatment decisions. Improved assessment tools could reduce secondary amputations, promote healing and improve patient outcomes.
Spectral MD was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health grant to identify potential imaging characteristics that would improve the success of amputations resulting from PVD and critical limb ischemia and has received government funding for research and development to improve burn care.
INSIGHT
Ocean Insight provided non-invasive multispectral technology that works with Spectral MD’s imaging system, creating the potential to make more accurate diagnosis — even by non-specialist physicians. We provided the hardware and expertise needed to help accelerate the project.
The Spectral MD system begins its diagnostics by sending various wavelengths of light into the body. Ocean Insight’s multispectral sensing camera then turns those wavelengths into pixel images, helping to map blood flow and tissue viability. With Spectral MD’s machine learning and deep learning technology, this multispectral data can determine whether tissue will heal, helping doctors make critical decisions about surgical intervention.
SOLUTION
Ocean Insight partnered with Texas-based Spectral MD, a medical device developer, to create non-invasive diagnostic tools that allow clinicians to look deep into the body for wound management, burn analysis and assessment of chronic conditions such as diabetic ulcers and peripheral vascular disease. Spectral MD’s DeepView® Wound Imaging System uses Ocean’s SpectroCam multispectral camera to look deep into the body non-invasively, and without the use of radiation or lasers.
DeepView is currently under review in Institutional Review Board-controlled clinical study environments. Spectral MD has received government funding for research and development of their imaging technology from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Defense Health Agency.
The revolutionary DeepView wound imaging system has the power to lower health care costs and reduce pain and suffering in thousands of patients every year. Multispectral imaging will continue to play a larger role in diagnostics and patient care. Compared with visual inspection and traditional imaging, multispectral imaging has the power to better discriminate between healthy and diseased conditions.
More information: https://bit.ly/2WJH1hB
