The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is the improvement in patient care and outcomes resulting from an affordable way to perform continuous monitoring of blood flow to and from a surgical site both during and post-surgery. As conventional surgical blood flow monitoring systems are bulky and expensive, the approach taken in this project allows for a compact and affordable device with the potential to serve surgeons and patients alike. The proposed system will increase the use of blood flow monitoring devices for use in reconstructive plastic surgery, with potential to spread to other applications, such as bedsores monitoring and/or field applications prevalent in military medicine. The proposed technology may result in fewer follow-up, corrective surgeries presently caused by delayed diagnosis of sufficient blood flow during surgery. The broader societal impact and commercial benefit, through cost savings and productivity gains within hospitals, will benefit patients and improve the quality and throughput of the medical system.
The proposed project addresses a primary compromise in reconstructive plastic surgery by reducing the uncertainty of surgeons that surgically reconstructed tissue flaps have adequate blood flow both during both the operation itself and post-op patient recovery. This reduces hospitals' costs by decreasing the number of unreimbursed follow-up, corrective surgical procedures required to correct flaps experiencing inadequate blood flow. The research objectives are to: improve depth of imaging and related quality of information to the surgeon or post-op patient support nurse; improve imaging system stabilization, enabling better surgical decision-making; and develop a user interface informed by market discovery with end users (reconstructive surgeons), with the ultimate goal of producing an improved prototype portable perfusion monitor to enable testing and progress towards commercialization. The methods to accomplish these goals include implementation of imaging system stabilization strategies, increased depth-of-imaging to see deeper (sub-surface) blood vessels and flow in tissue, and development of a user interface informed by customer discovery which provides surgeons with surgical site blood flow information in their preferred format.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
