Desenvolvimento de software para obtenção de atributos de imagens para avaliação do processo cicatricial de feridas

Abstract

The healing of wounds is one of the most complex biological process that occur during our lives. In patients, the healing rate of chronic wound is relatively uniform, and is estimated to be 0.63-0.65 mm/week for diabetics and non-diabetics individuals, respectively. A ruler, designed by the physician Intensivist Adriano Mehl (BR Patent 30 2012 004137-6), by means of an acetate decal, demarcates the limits of the wound, allowing continuous evaluation of the evolution, stagnation or regression of the wound area and the consequent success in conducting the clinic adopted procedures. However, the comparative process between the successive images produced in acetate, with the purpose of quantifying the area involved, becomes subjective, considering that the wounds often contains with irregular area and volume. This requires an automatic tool that performs this measurement autonomously. This work aims to present, through the application of tools for the recognition of image patterns, a software capable of analyzing the scanned images from the acetate, providing a final value of the area in cm² and its perimeter in cm. For this, it is necessary that the digitized images go through morphological processes, in order to isolate the polygonal line that delimits the region of the wound. The area and the perimeter were determined through a region bounded by the polygonal line. A comparison performed from other analytical methods has demonstrated that this tool has sufficient conditions to become a new methodology in the estimation of wound areas and perimeters during the cicatricial process.