Portable, low-cost multispectral imaging system: design, development, validation, and utilization.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Medical Imaging
• Optical Spectroscopy

Background:

• Estimating tissue optical properties like hemoglobin concentration and scattering is crucial for diagnostics.
• Existing spectral imaging systems are often expensive and bulky, limiting accessibility.
• There is a need for cost-effective, portable spectral imaging solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present and analyze a low-cost, reflectance-mode multispectral imaging system.
• To validate the system's performance against established spectroscopic methods.
• To demonstrate the system's capability for in vivo optical measurements and clinical applications.

Main Methods:

• Developed a system using LEDs, a monochrome camera, and a tablet computer (bill of materials < $1000).
• Detailed hardware design, calibration, image capture, and preprocessing protocols.
• Validated diffuse reflectance measurements against a spectrometer and performed in vivo forearm imaging on volunteers.

Main Results:

• Achieved excellent agreement between the developed system and a spectrometer for diffuse reflectance measurements.
• Successfully estimated in vivo tissue optical properties using Monte Carlo lookup tables.
• Observed a significant increase in superficial blood content after inducing erythema in volunteers.

Conclusions:

• The low-cost multispectral imaging system provides accurate spectral data.
• Clinically meaningful optical measurements can be derived from the captured data.
• This system offers a promising, accessible tool for biomedical optical analysis.