Chronic skin wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers, pressure wounds and other chronic skin wounds affect more than 6 million people in the U.S. alone, with the cost of treatments mounting to $25 billion each year. The current standard of care requires removing a small piece of the wound tissue for laboratory analysis under a microscope, but disturbing tissue around the wound can be disruptive to the healing process.
Recognizing a lack of non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers to monitor such wounds, University of Arkansas 
Optical redox ratio of the wound edge changes over time. In vivo redox ratio maps of FAD/(NADH+FAD) were generated from the normalized fluorescence intensities. Source: University of Arkansasresearchers have identified a biomarker to track changes in cellular metabolism as wounds transition through the healing process. The group applied multiphoton microscopy to acquire a 3D image of wound structure and its metabolism … read more