In vivo burn diagnosis by camera-phone diffuse reflectance laser speckle detection

A new perspective on quantitative assessment of photodynamic therapy mediated hydrogel nanocomposite in wound healing using objective biospeckle and morphological local-gradient

Skin wounding is a serious public health issue, especially when considering factors that accelerate tissue recovery. Consequently, the use of photodynamic therapy (PDT) as an effective wound-healing treatment has attracted more scientific attention. Although assessing the wound healing rate is crucial for appropriate monitoring of the probability of wound healing and evaluating the treatment efficiency, the currently used techniques lack the ability to provide such information. Therefore, this study has two aims, first, it contributes to the development of a new image-guided biospeckle system for quantitative monitoring of skin wound healing rate. Second, it evaluates the potential of using a novel synthesized PDT-mediated polyethylene glycol fabric with methylene blue (PEG-MB) hydrogel nanocomposite in accelerating wound healing. The proposed imaging system initially acquires raw biospeckle images from the wound regions of adult healthy albino mice treated with the synthesized hydrogel nanocomposite. Each raw biospeckle image is then converted into maps of morphological local-gradient matrices implemented from the combination of dilation and erosion operations at different radii up to 25 pixels. Subsequently, their intensity histogram statistics are computed, taking central moments as the feature set. Final characterization is achieved via a linear combination of the biospeckle statistics maintaining as much variance as possible using principal component analysis (PCA). The results confirmed by cytokine concentration measurement and histological investigation demonstrate that the innovative biospeckle image-guided system is ideal for investigating wound healing and suggest the potential of the hydrogel nanocomposite as an active dressing.

Quantifying tissue perfusion after peripheral endovascular procedures: Novel tissue perfusion endpoints to improve outcomes

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a flow-limiting condition caused by narrowing of the peripheral arteries typically due to atherosclerosis. It affects almost 200 million people globally with patients either being asymptomatic or presenting with claudication or critical or acute limb ischemia. PAD-affected patients display increased mortality rates, rendering their management critical. Endovascular interventions have proven crucial in PAD treatment and decreasing mortality and have significantly increased over the past years. However, for the functional assessment of the outcomes of revascularization procedures for the treatment of PAD, the same tests that have been used over the past decades are still being employed. Those only allow an indirect evaluation, while an objective quantification of limb perfusion is not feasible. Standard intraarterial angiography only demonstrates post-intervention vessel patency, hence is unable to accurately estimate actual limb perfusion and is incapable of quantifying treatment outcome. Therefore, there is a significant necessity for real-time objectively measurable procedural outcomes of limb perfusion that will allow vascular experts to intraoperatively quantify and assess outcomes, thus optimizing treatment, obviating misinterpretation, and providing significantly improved clinical results. The purpose of this review is to familiarize readers with the currently available perfusion-assessment methods and to evaluate possible prospects.