Silhouette Mobile: Portable Wound Scanning Unit

A New Zealand company has developed the "Silhouette Mobile," an infrared scanning device that builds and records a 3D model of a wound to assist in the monitoring of healing wounds. The Silhouette Mobile modules plug into PDAs (probably only Pocket PC-based), then broadcast patients' information back to a central database over Wi-Fi or cellular data networks.

Actually, looking at this again, I'm not sure it actually builds a 3D model, per se, although they do record "surface and depth measurement." At the very least, it takes "photographic images; quantitative measures; other user-entered wound assessment data." Either way, a red scanning beam means Dr. Future is on the case.

Product Page [AranzMedical.com via MedGadget via Oh Gizmo]

[#1 posted by Anonymous , September 4, 2007 7:08 AM]

Even looking at it again you've made this sound cooler than it actually is.

This is just a regular digital camera with a couple of bar-code scanner LEDs bolted to the sides. Because the beams are parallel and a known distance apart, the image-processing software can extrapolate limited spatial information from the image such as scale.

Unfortunately, from a gadget chic perspective, swiping the beams across the wound in classic medical sci-fi fashion wouldn't do anything useful even though it would look cooler.

[#2 posted by Joel Johnson , September 4, 2007 8:36 AM]

Ah, you are probably right. But still: BEAMS!