Digital imaging of wounds: are measurements reproducible among observers?

Advances in digital imaging and archiving have made the measurement and documentation of wound areas possible over time. To assess the reproducibility and precision of digital image measurements, we used WoundMatrix Web (http://www.woundmatrix.com/) and recruited a group of caregivers from the Johns Hopkins Wound Center to measure the size of wounds on digital images by measuring length and width and tracing the circumference of the same wounds. One set of images was provided by WoundMatrix (WoundMatrix Inc, Chadds Ford, PA) and a second set used our own photographs taken at the Johns Hopkins Wound Center. Our results demonstrate that digital analysis with WoundMatrix Web is reproducible and precise with acceptable variation among readers. This supports the use of digital images of wounds to follow clinical progress as well as analyze the effects of new clinical interventions in clinical trials.