Diagnostic and Prognostic Utility of Non-Invasive Multimodal Imaging in Chronic Wound Monitoring: a Systematic Review.

Abstract

Monitoring chronic wound [CW] healing is a challenging issue for clinicians across the world. Moreover, the health and cost burden of CW are escalating at a disturbing rate due to a global rise in population of elderly and diabetic cases. The conventional approach includes visual contour, sketches, or more rarely tracings. However, such conventional techniques bring forth infection, pain, allergies. Furthermore, these methods are subjective as well as time-consuming. As such, nowadays, non-touching and non-invasive CW monitoring system based on imaging techniques are gaining importance. They not only reduce patients' discomfort but also provide rapid wound diagnosis and prognosis. This review provides a survey of different types of CW characteristics, their healing mechanism and the multimodal non-invasive imaging methods that have been used for their diagnosis and prognosis. Current clinical practices as well as personal health systems [m-health and e-health] for CW monitoring have been discussed.