Hyperspectral SWIR Imaging of Skin Inflammation

Shmuylovich, Leonid, Washington Univ. School of Medicine in St. Louis; Berezin, Mikhail, Washington Univ. School of Medicine in St. Louis

doi:10.1117/3.2604326.ch14

Book: Short-Wavelength Infrared Windows for Biomedical Applications

Editor(s): Laura A. Sordillo; Peter P. Sordillo

Author(s): Leonid Shmuylovich, Mikhail Berezin

Published: 2021

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2604326.ch14

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

When excluding mortality, skin disease has been estimated to be the fourthleading cause of disability worldwide. Visual inspection of disease-associated changes in skin appearance is the primary clinical tool for disease diagnosis and management. However, the subjective nature of visual assessment can result in misdiagnosis of a chronic inflammatory skin condition, leading to prolonged patient suffering from a treatable disorder. Nonwhite individuals make up 40% of the United States population and face additional challenges because disease can appear more subtly in pigmented skin, leading to systematic underestimation of severity. Given these concerns, there is an urgent need for objective technologies that can quantitatively assess cutaneous inflammation across diverse skin types.