The present and accepted standard for determining the status of tissue relies on visual inspection of the tissue. Based on the surface appearance of the tissue, medical personnel will make an assessment of the tissue and proceed to a course of action or treatment. Visual inspection of tissue is central to many areas of clinical medicine, and remains a cornerstone of dermatology, reconstructive plastic surgery, and in the management of chronic wounds, and burn injuries. Near infrared spectroscopic imaging holds the promise of being able to monitor the dynamics of tissue physiology in real-time and detect pathology in living tissue. The continuous measurement of metabolic, physiological, or structural changes in tissue is of primary concern in many clinical and biomedical domains. A near infrared hyperspectral imaging system was constructed for the assessment of burn injuries and skin flaps or skin grafts. This device merged basic science with engineering and integrated manufacturing to develop a device suitable to detect ischemic tissue. This device has the potential of providing measures of tissue physiology, oxygen delivery and tissue hydration during patient screening, in the operating room or during therapy and post-operative/treatment monitoring. Results from a pre-clinical burn injury study will be presented.

Date Published: 2 July 2003
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 4959, Spectral Imaging: Instrumentation, Applications, and Analysis II, (2 July 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.479483

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4959:
Spectral Imaging: Instrumentation, Applications, and Analysis II
Richard M. Levenson; Gregory H. Bearman; Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, Editor(s)