A new system for the assessment of diabetic foot planter pressure

Most skin injuries in neuropathy-type diabetic foot patients occur on the planter soft tissue at sites of abnormally high pressure values. If not detected and treated early enough, these localized sites are likely to develop skin breakdown and ulceration, which puts the patient at higher risks including the need for amputation. Current diagnostic techniques, such as CT and MRI, are primarily used for assessing later stage patients but are not used for screening. In this work, we report a new system for the assessment of planter pressure distribution. The system is easy to use, inexpensive, and may provide the needed accuracy to become a screening and ulceration risk assessment device. The method used is based on the "blanching" effect of tissue that occurs when it is under pressure. Using a standard optical scanner, we acquire the footprint under body weight and map the resulting blanching to different intensity levels. Different intensity levels are mapped to different color codes to obtain pressure distribution maps. These maps can be used by the clinician to identify high risk sites to help prescribe the necessary intervention. Initial testing of the system has demonstrated encouraging preliminary results.