Whether a wound heals properly revolves around one essential question: how well is the tissue nourished by the blood? With sufficient oxygen and nutrients, the wound can heal. But if blood flow is insufficient, healing is hampered, and the tissue can even die. Assessing blood flow is difficult for doctors, especially with just the naked eye. Fluorescence imaging can make the blood flow visible and quantifiable in the operating room, but only with an expensive system that is not portable due to its size. The VITAL-FI project team wants to change that by investigating the development of a compact, affordable camera system capable of showing the condition of the tissue in outpatient clinics or home care.
Why the human eye is not always sufficient
Many clinical decisions depend on the question: Can this tissue still recover? Prof. Dr Bob Geelkerken (UT), vascular surgeon at MST and co-leader of the project, knows the dilemma like no other. "The surgical eye is simply not reliable enough," he says. "You can see if the tissue is dead or if it is healthy. But everything in between? It is easy to get it wrong."
That is why fluorescence imaging (FI) is now used as standard in the operating room at MST. A dye is administered via an IV drip. The dye flows through the body with the blood, and a special camera shows where it ends up. The dye appears quickly and clearly in well-perfused tissue, whereas in poorly perfused tissue, the dye appears slowly or not at all.
"We want to make the benefits of FI accessible to all areas of healthcare, not just the operating room," explains biomedical engineer Harry Vaassen. He is head of the fluorescence lab at MST and is also conducting PhD research at the Multi-Modality Medical Imaging (M3i) research group of the University of Twente. "The current systems are bulky, expensive, and designed for dozens of applications. Not workable for a nursing ward where you need a quick measurement."
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