The team of USF and Veterans Administration (VA) researchers has received funding from DOD CDMR Spinal Cord Injury Research Program entitled "An Automated Pressure Ulcer Monitoring System to Improve Pressure Ulcer Health Outcomes in Veterans with SCI". The lead is VA researcher Matthew Patterson. Total DOD funding is $593,094 (with USF subcontract $177,248) over three year period (9/30/2016- 9/29/2019).
Pressure ulcers (PrUs) are a high-risk, high-volume, high-cost problem for Veterans with spinal cord injury (SCI) and for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). PrUs account for one third of all VHA SCI admissions and over half of all hospital bed days of care for Veterans with SCI.1 Effective evaluation of PrU treatments depends on reliable and valid measurements of healing. The proposed three-year study will develop a computer aided pressure ulcer monitoring system (PrUMS) to automate PrU measurement to track PrU healing progress for Veterans with SCI. PrUMS will provide a fast, easy, objective, and low-cost measure of the SCI-PUMT and wound volume using state-of-the-art computer vision techniques.