Development of a novel, compact, and transportable multispectral imaging device for wound healing monitoring

Multispectral imaging (MSI) devices are optical diagnostic tools that can be used for the non-invasive monitoring and characterization of various kinds of pathologies, including skin conditions such as wounds and ulcers, due to the capability of such technology to track alterations of structural and physiological parameters (e.g., oxygenation and haemodynamics) from changes in the optical properties of the investigated tissue across a large number of spectral bands. In this work, a novel, compact and transportable MSI device based on spectral scanning and diffuse reflectance imaging is going to be presented. The apparatus is composed of light emitting diodes (LEDs) as light sources and a CMOS camera, making it a very compact, manageable, user-friendly, and cost-effective system. The wavelengths of the LED sources, that are located in the visible-NIR portion of the spectrum, have been specifically selected to target and monitor alterations of oxygenation and haemodynamics that can provide biomarkers of monitoring wound healing in chronic ulcers. The calibration of the MSI system is going to be illustrated, discussing the calibration procedure and results obtained with (1) Monte Carlo-based, digital phantoms and (2) liquid optical phantoms. Both types of phantoms mimic the properties of biological tissues and allow to introduce variations in a controlled manner. The proposed MSI system is also going to be tested on patients affected by chronic skin ulcers in order to assess its efficacy and accuracy

HyperProbe consortium: innovate tumour neurosurgery with innovative photonic solutions

Recent advancements in imaging technologies (MRI, PET, CT, among others) have significantly improved clinical localisation of lesions of the central nervous system (CNS) before surgery, making possible for neurosurgeons to plan and navigate away from functional brain locations when removing tumours, such as gliomas. However, neuronavigation in the surgical management of brain tumours remains a significant challenge, due to the inability to maintain accurate spatial information of pathological and healthy locations intraoperatively. To answer this challenge, the HyperProbe consortium have been put together, consisting of a team of engineers, physicists, data scientists and neurosurgeons, to develop an innovative, all-optical, intraoperative imaging system based on (i) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) for rapid, multiwavelength spectral acquisition, and (ii) artificial intelligence (AI) for image reconstruction, morpho-chemical characterisation and molecular fingerprint recognition. Our HyperProbe system will (1) map, monitor and quantify biomolecules of interest in cerebral physiology; (2) be handheld, cost-effective and user-friendly; (3) apply AI-based methods for the reconstruction of the hyperspectral images, the analysis of the spatio-spectral data and the development and quantification of novel biomarkers for identification of glioma and differentiation from functional brain tissue. HyperProbe will be validated and optimised with studies in optical phantoms, in vivo against gold standard modalities in neuronavigational imaging, and finally we will provide proof of principle of its performances during routine brain tumour surgery on patients. HyperProbe aims at providing functional and structural information on biomarkers of interest that is currently missing during neuro-oncological interventions

Transportable hyperspectral imaging setup based on fast, high-density spectral scanning for in situ quantitative biochemical mapping of fresh tissue biopsies

International audienc