A MICROMECHANICAL SENSOR TO UNDERSTAND AND MONITOR WOUND HEALING

包括慢性糖尿病/静脉溃疡、烧伤和手术切开在内的伤口每年花费NHS GB 45亿至51亿英镑进行处理。它们会造成巨大的疼痛，每年的治疗都会消耗大量的临床资源。为了减轻伤口管理对患者和卫生服务机构的负担，我们正在寻求以比以往更高的分辨率了解伤口，并利用这些数据来开发非侵入性伤口管理传感器技术。我们的项目从试图了解伤口实际发生了什么开始--这在生物学上已经很好地建立了，但在机械上却很少被理解，特别是在微观(亚毛发宽度)尺度上。为了解决这个问题，我们将使用压痕来机械地探测皮肤，建立其属性以及它们如何随时间变化的地图。有了这些关于愈合皮肤组织材料特性的最新数据，我们可以确定如何能够更有效地支持组织愈合。我们还将测量皮肤的关键结构成分-胶原蛋白-以确定导致这些愈合变化的结构变化。该项目的第二部分设计了一种微型传感器，可以嵌入绷带中，非侵入性地测量伤口特性的变化。为了实现这一点，我们将采用第一部分赠款中测量的特性，然后定制一个传感器，通过愈合组织发送声波。测量这种波的传输将告诉我们组织在时间上是如何变化的，以及伤口是否表现出表明敷料或治疗方法需要改变的行为。该项目将工程特征和传感器开发与生物科学结合在一个雄心勃勃的跨学科项目中，解决主要的医疗负担。这项工作的成果将是重要的学术理解和传感方法，它将为这一临床领域的“智能”和远程医疗建立技术。因此，我们设想了一条通往廉价、简单和非侵入性疗法的道路，这将改善创伤的社会经济负担。

Wounds including chronic diabetic/venous ulcers, burns and surgical incisions cost the NHS £4.5-5.1 billion per year to manage. They cause significant pain and their treatment consumes huge clinical resources every year. In order to reduce the burden of wound management on both the patient and health service, we are seeking to understand wounds at a higher resolution than ever before, and to use this data to develop a non-invasive wound management sensor technology. Our project starts by seeking to understand what actually happens in a wound - which is well established biologically, but poorly understood mechanically, especially at the micro-(sub-hair width)-scale. To address this, we will use indentation to probe skin mechanically, building up a map of its properties and how they change over time. With this fresh data on material properties of healing skin tissue, we can identify how we might be able to support tissue to heal more effectively. We will also measure the key structural component of skin - collagen - to identify the structural changes that lead to these healing changes. The second part of this project engineers a miniature sensor that can be embedded in a bandage to non-invasively measure the changes in a wound's properties. To achieve this, we will take the properties measured in the first part of the grant, and then tailor a sensor to send acoustic waves through the healing tissue. Measuring this wave transmission will tell us how the tissue is changing in time and whether a wound is displaying behaviour that indicates that a dressing or therapeutic approach needs to be changed.This project combines engineering characterisation and sensor development with biological sciences in an ambitious inter-disciplinary project, addressing a major healthcare burden. Outcomes from this work will be important academic understanding and a sensing approach, which establishes technology for "smart" and remote healthcare in this clinical area. As a result, we envisage a pathway towards cheap, simple and non-invasive therapies that will improve the socio-economic burden of wounds.