Monitoring diabetic wound healing by NIR spectroscopy

Chronic wounds represent one of the most serious complications of diabetes. Lack of quantitative assessment of healing progress makes diabetic wound management a clinical challenge. We constructed an optical device based on near infrared diffuse optical spectroscopy and monitored the change in wound optical properties during healing. A single source, four detector frequency domain instrument with multiple wavelengths was employed in a streptozotocin induced diabetic rat animal model. Optical properties including absorption and reduced scattering coefficients were measured. Our results show that there is significant difference in the absorption and reduced scattering coefficient of the wounds between diabetic and controls rats, and such difference persists throughout the healing period. Our technique would be highly useful in monitoring and quantifying the wound healing process.