Research on application of spectral imaging technology in determining on thermal burn degree

Thermal injuries are a serious medical problem in the China. The accurate determination of burn degree is difficult for scatheless diagnose and a precondition of treating burn wounds. Multi-spectral photographic analysis is expected to play an important role in determining burn wound degree, the Liquid Crystal Tunable Filter has a capability of selecting the observing wavelength instaneously with high spectral resolution and excellent imaging quality in visible and near-infrared spectrum band. Taking advantage of this filter, we have developed a LCTF imaging spectrometer prototype instrument at visible wavelength bands for burn wound diagnose. In this paper, spectral analysis experiments were first performed on KUNMING mice and burn injury patients to find the characteristic reflective spectral curves at 400nm-1800nm, the imaging spectrometer prototype instrument using LCTFs which are sensitive to radiation in 420nm-750nmwavelength bands was built based on spectral analysis results. The spectral imaging experiments on burn injury patients have verified the excellent properties of the prototype instrument, including high quality spectral images with spectral resolution of less than 7nm and continuous selection of the output wavelength. The burn areas of patients were marked with different colors which represents as different burn degree and the spectral imaging system has thus been proven to have the ability to classify the burn areas through comparing their reflective spectral curves with characteristic spectrum of the different burn degree in spectral database in the future. Finally, the application of the LCTF imaging spectrometer to burn wound diagnose are summarized based on the results of spectral imaging experiments on burn injuries.