Development of a Thermal and Hyperspectral Imaging System for Wound Characterization and Metabolic Correlation

Monitoring and treatment of wounds remains a very personal activity. A patient is often seen by multiple individuals who subjectively document the wound healing process. The metabolic needs of wound healing are also not well understood. A collaboration between APL and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was therefore formed to study the metabolic needs of wound healing. A mid-wave IR thermal and seven-band visible/near-IR hyperspectral imaging system has been developed to provide a novel approach to documenting and characterizing the progress of wound healing and local wound metabolic activity. This article summarizes the development of the imaging system and gives a detailed system description.