The Need

Timely, accurate assessment of tissue viability is a critical element in doctors’ decisions on treatment approaches for burns, breast reconstruction, wounds, plastic surgery etc. To the extent that better tools can be provided to doctors, they can take more targeted actions with less post operative rework, including better preventative measures. In addition to the key goal of improving the experience for the patient, this would increase time available to doctors and make more efficient use of health care resources. As outlined in a recent Frost and Sullivan report, D11A 2008 “Advances in Wound Healing Techniques”---- “There is a need arising for designing an innovative system that can precisely measure area as well as depth of wounds devoid of patient contact.”

Systems have been developed and deployed to attempt to close this gap. While validating the need, they fall short in several key areas; invasiveness, timeliness, utility and consistency, ease of use are the major ones. Systems which use dyes for example have to tradeoff against short imaging windows and the problematic impact of the dye on the patient.

Kent’s technology enables an imaging system which is non invasive/non intrusive, much faster to image, with high utility and aims to assist the clinicians, reduce treatment times and save cost in the health systems.

Applications

The applications for this imaging technology are broad. It is intended to act as a non-subjective aid in the physician’s decision regarding the health of compromised tissue. This technology platform, with slight application specific modifications, could be developed to serve in a variety of markets and applications where blood and oxygen-based measurements are important. The system’s current strengths due to its history of clinical assessments lie in the “burns” and “plastic & reconstructive surgery” arenas and these will be the first markets to penetrate. Initial sales of products will be managed internally through the Kent sales force until such volumes and interest attract distribution companies based on the lowered risk of market entry.