Accurate tissue injury assessment
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method of assessing an injury to tissue comprising:
- (A) reflecting an electromagnetic signal from said tissue to produce a reflected electromagnetic signal;
(B) producing spectral data pertaining to the intensities of individual wavelengths of said reflected electromagnetic signal;
(C) compressing said spectral data to produce compressed spectral data;
said compressing step being performed before a processing step such that, during said processing step, compressed spectral data is processed;
(D) analyzing said spectral data to obtain a set of results; and
(E) providing an indication of the nature of said injury to said tissue based upon said set of results.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Systems and methods using a spectrometer system for real-time automatic evaluation of tissue injury are described. A method of assessing an injury to tissue comprises reflecting an electromagnetic signal from the tissue to produce a reflected electromagnetic signal; producing spectral data pertaining to the intensities of individual wavelengths of the reflected electromagnetic signal; analyzing the spectral data to obtain a set of results; and providing an indication of the nature of the injury to the tissue based upon the set of results.
-
Citations
15 Claims
-
1. A method of assessing an injury to tissue comprising:
-
(A) reflecting an electromagnetic signal from said tissue to produce a reflected electromagnetic signal;
(B) producing spectral data pertaining to the intensities of individual wavelengths of said reflected electromagnetic signal;
(C) compressing said spectral data to produce compressed spectral data;
said compressing step being performed before a processing step such that, during said processing step, compressed spectral data is processed;
(D) analyzing said spectral data to obtain a set of results; and
(E) providing an indication of the nature of said injury to said tissue based upon said set of results. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3)
where the functions ƒ
kn are single-valued functions, cijn and cjkn are coefficients from a matrix, and y1 . . . yk are the outputs of analyzing step and are proportional to the probability that the tissue injury is of class k.
-
-
3. The method according to claim 2, wherein said coefficients are fixed.
-
4. A method of assessing an injury to tissue comprising:
-
(A) generating a first electromagnetic signal;
then(B) reflecting said first electromagnetic signal from said tissue to produce a second electromagnetic signal;
then(C) transmitting said second electromagnetic signal to a spectrometer;
then(D) producing spectral data pertaining to said second electromagnetic signal using said spectrometer, said spectral data including information pertaining to the intensities of individual wavelengths of said second electromagnetic signal;
then(E) compressing said spectral data to produce compressed spectral data;
said compressing step being performed before a processing step such that, during said processing step, compressed spectral data is processed;
(F) analyzing said spectral data to obtain a set of results, said set of results indicating the nature of said injury to said tissue; and
(G) providing an indication of the nature of said injury to said tissue based upon said set of results. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6)
where the functions ƒ
kn are single-valued functions, cijn and cjkn are coefficients from a matrix, and y1 . . . yk are the outputs of said analysis step and are proportional to the probability that the tissue injury is of class k.
-
-
6. The method according to claim 4, further comprising compressing said spectral data to produce compressed spectral data, said compressing step including transforming said spectral data to a representation in which said spectral data is represented using a plurality of coefficients, the total number of said coefficients being relatively small as compared to the total number of wavelengths for which intensity information is produced during the producing step (D), each of said coefficients corresponding to one of a plurality of orthogonal eigen-spectra of the transformation, and said compressing step being performed before said processing step.
-
7. An apparatus for assessing an injury to a tissue, comprising:
-
an electromagnetic signal generator;
an optical fiber connected to said electromagnetic signal generator;
a fiber optic probe connected to said optical fiber;
a broad band spectrometer connected to said fiber optic probe; and
a computer connected to said broad band spectrometer, said computer analyzing data from said broad band spectrometer to produce a plurality of outputs, each of said plurality of outputs corresponding to a tissue injury category; and
wherein said computer includes a principle component analyzer of broad band spectral data obtained from said broad band spectrometer; and
wherein said computer produces a set of results at said plurality of outputs, said set of results indicating the nature of said injury to said tissue. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
an autoscaling processor;
a singular value decomposition analyzer coupled to said autoscaling processor; and
a classifier coupled to said singular value decomposition analyzer.
-
-
10. The apparatus according to claim 7, further comprising a sample enclosure.
-
11. The apparatus according to claim 7, further comprising a positioner operatively connected to said fiber optic probe.
-
12. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein one of said plurality of outputs corresponds to a full thickness burn injury and another of said plurality of outputs corresponds to a partial thickness burn injury.
-
13. A method of assessing an injury to tissue, the method comprising:
-
reflecting an electromagnetic signal off said tissue to produce a reflected electromagnetic signal;
measuring the intensities of individual wavelengths of said reflected electromagnetic signal to produce spectrum data;
compressing said spectrum data and extracting features from said spectrum data, including the step of extracting a set of orthogonal feature vectors to represent said spectrum data; and
classifying said set of orthogonal feature vectors, including the step of producing a set of results at a plurality of outputs, each of said outputs corresponding to a tissue injury category, and said set of results indicating the nature of said injury to said tissue. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15)
-
Specification