Volume Measures Using a Digital Image Analysis System are Reliable in Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Area of Science:

• Wound healing research
• Medical imaging technology
• Diabetic foot ulcer management

Background:

• Accurate wound size measurement is crucial for effective wound healing research and clinical practice.
• Digital imaging and photogrammetric software, like VeVMD, are increasingly used for estimating wound volume.
• The reliability of VeVMD for wound volume assessment remained undetermined prior to this study.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the reliability of wound volume measurements using VeVMD software.
• To assess both inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of VeVMD in quantifying wound volume.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study involving adults with full-thickness, neuropathic diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) was conducted.
• Ulcer images were captured and analyzed using VeVMD software to determine wound volume.
• Four independent raters performed repeated measurements over two weeks, with blinding, to compute inter- and intra-rater correlations.

Main Results:

• Analysis included 33 subjects with DFU. Initial inter-rater reliability was 0.745 and intra-rater reliability was 0.868.
• Exclusion of four ulcers with complex recessed areas improved reliability significantly.
• Post-exclusion, inter-rater reliability reached 0.970 and intra-rater reliability reached 0.981, indicating excellent agreement.

Conclusions:

• VeVMD demonstrates acceptable reliability for measuring diabetic foot ulcer volumes, even with variations in margin definition.
• The software's performance is reliable for DFU, supporting its use in research and clinical settings.
• Further research is required to ascertain VeVMD's performance with wound types beyond DFU.