Digital image analysis of chronic ulcers tissues

Abstract

Ulcers are chronic wounds that do not heal within a predictable amount of time causing severe pain and discomfort to the patients. Describing the proportion of tissue types is a part of the approved clinical method of wound assessment. Many imaging techniques segment and classify different types of tissues of chronic skin wounds according to the tissue colour. The early visual indication of ulcer healing is the appearance of granulation tissue at the base of ulcers. Granulation tissue appears red in colour due to pigment hemoglobin content in the blood capillaries. The main objective of this research work is to study the optical characteristics of pigment hemoglobin content as a possible image marker in detecting granulation tissue from RGB colour images of chronic ulcers. Independent Component Analysis is employed in the study to convert RGB images of chronic ulcers into images due to pigment hemoglobin only. Preliminary results indicate areas of hemoglobin distribution obtained from hemoglobin images correspond to the presence of granulation tissue on the surface of chronic ulcers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.