WPI researcher, UMass Chan Medical School team up to develop wound app that could help save lives
WORCESTER — Bodily wounds that persist or that won't go away — aka “chronic wounds” — can be potentially deadly.
Diabetics can develop sores that can fester. Nursing home patients develop bed sores from sitting or lying in one spot too long. Others wounds are connected to cancer, poor circulation, or vascular problems.
What starts out as a small opening can become larger, accelerate to infection, and in a worst-case scenario result in amputation and complications that can lead to death.
Now, there’s an effort by a team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and UMass Chan Medical School that could potentially identify infected wounds before they become problematic.
The team is working on what is called a “Deep Infected Wound Detector,” a smartphone application that uses photographs, thermal imaging and artificial intelligence to identify wounds that are infected and in need of advanced care.
“This is extremely important,” said Emmaneul Agu, a computer science professor at WPI and one of the co-leaders on the app’s development. “The app has the potential to be as good as a world-class medical expert.”
Chronic wounds that don't heal account for millions of visits to hospital emergency departments yearly, and some studies estimate those visits cost Medicare more than $30 billion annually.
Here's how it works
To develop the app, hundreds of photographs are collected from patients at the Wound Center at UMass Memorial Medical Center. The photos are fed into computer algorithms that Agu called “neural networks” to detect infections.
The primary advancement in this app is thermal imaging.
The app is on smartphones equipped with thermal cameras to detect temperature changes under the skin that could go undetected during a routine check of a wound. Those temperature changes could signal the onset of infection.
So, when medical providers go outside the hospital to perform regular checkups of a patient's wound, the app can identify infection and the need to see a specialist.
For example, when a nurse visits a patient at home or at a nursing home to perform a regular check on a wound, the app can detect if it’s healing properly, is showing signs of infection or is infected. If infected, the patient is referred to a specialist for more advanced care.
Besides giving patients quality health care, increased efficiency of medical resources is another goal of the app.
Dr. Giorgio Giatsidis, assistant professor of plastic surgery at UMass Chan and co-leader of the app’s development, explained that some patients come to the Wound Center weekly for a checkup.
But some of those same patients don’t need to visit that frequently.
“(The app) supports all that we want to achieve. To deliver efficient and safe home care, and reserve hospital care for those that need it,” said Giatsidis.
More than a decade of work
The research team started developing the app 11 years ago.
The early version included photos of patients' wounds, with a focus on diabetes, measuring factors like blood sugar and the level of a patient’s exercise. A $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported the work.
Wound detection was another feature in that app, and it caught the attention of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a $1.6 million grant. The NIH recently provided a $2.4 million grant over the next four years to support further development, including the thermal imaging component.
The app's performance will be compared to doctors' exams of wounds. Researchers are looking for the app to achieve correct diagnosis at least 80% of the time. If that occurs, then Agu said there is potential to take the app to the commercial market.
A possible spin-off business at WPI with investors contributing $2 million to $5 million is a possibility, said Agu.
Father's illness a motivator
Agu’s father, Phillip Nnaemeka-Agu, suffered with diabetes and complications from bed sores at the end of his life.
His father died in 2011, and Agu said it motivated him to continue his research and see that the app helps patients get the care they need to safely treat their chronic wounds.
“We’ve invested 11 years in our research lives,” said Agu. “The ultimate goal is to put this app in nurses’ hands to reduce bad outcomes."
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @henrytelegram
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: A hospital and WPI in Worcester are developing wound app to save lives
