Deep-learning approach for automated thickness measurement of epithelial tissue and scab using optical coherence tomography.

Journal: Journal of biomedical optics
PMID:

Abstract

SIGNIFICANCE: In order to elucidate therapeutic treatment to accelerate wound healing, it is crucial to understand the process underlying skin wound healing, especially re-epithelialization. Epidermis and scab detection is of importance in the wound healing process as their thickness is a vital indicator to judge whether the re-epithelialization process is normal or not. Since optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a real-time and non-invasive imaging technique that can perform a cross-sectional evaluation of tissue microstructure, it is an ideal imaging modality to monitor the thickness change of epidermal and scab tissues during wound healing processes in micron-level resolution. Traditional segmentation on epidermal and scab regions was performed manually, which is time-consuming and impractical in real time.

Authors

  • Yubo Ji
    University of Dundee, School of Science and Engineering, Dundee, United Kingdom.
  • Shufan Yang
    School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
  • Kanheng Zhou
    University of Dundee, School of Science and Engineering, Dundee, United Kingdom.
  • Holly R Rocliffe
    The University of Edinburgh, The Queen's Medical Research Institute, MRC Centre for Inflammation Res, United Kingdom.
  • Antonella Pellicoro
    The University of Edinburgh, The Queen's Medical Research Institute, MRC Centre for Inflammation Res, United Kingdom.
  • Jenna L Cash
    The University of Edinburgh, The Queen's Medical Research Institute, MRC Centre for Inflammation Res, United Kingdom.
  • Ruikang Wang
    University of Washington, Department of Bioengineering, Seattle, Washington, United States.
  • Chunhui Li
    State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: chunhuili@bnu.edu.cn.
  • Zhihong Huang
    University of Dundee, School of Science and Engineering, Dundee, United Kingdom.