Miskovic Vanja, Malafronte Elena, Minetti Christophe, Machrafi Hatim, Varon Carolina, Iorio Carlo Saverio
Service Chimie-Physique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
GIGA-In Silico Medicine, Université de Liége, Liège, Belgium.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 May 12;10:806362. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.806362. eCollection 2022.
Wound management in Space is an important factor to be considered in future Human Space Exploration. It demands the development of reliable wound monitoring systems that will facilitate the assessment and proper care of wounds in isolated environments, such as Space. One possible system could be developed using liquid crystal films, which have been a promising solution for real-time temperature monitoring in healthcare, but they are not yet implemented in clinical practice. To progress in the latter, the goal of this study is twofold. First, it provides a full characterization of a sensing element composed of thermotropic liquid crystals arrays embedded between two elastomer layers, and second, it discusses how such a system compares against non-local infrared measurements. The sensing element evaluated here has an operating temperature range of 34-38°C, and a quick response time of approximately 0.25 s. The temperature distribution of surfaces obtained using this system was compared to the one obtained using the infrared thermography, a technique commonly used to measure temperature distributions at the wound site. This comparison was done on a mimicked wound, and results indicate that the proposed sensing element can reproduce the temperature distributions, similar to the ones obtained using infrared imaging. Although there is a long way to go before implementing the liquid crystal sensing element into clinical practice, the results of this work demonstrate that such sensors can be suitable for future wound monitoring systems.
太空伤口管理是未来人类太空探索中需要考虑的一个重要因素。它要求开发可靠的伤口监测系统，以促进在诸如太空等孤立环境中对伤口的评估和妥善护理。一种可能的系统可以利用液晶薄膜来开发，液晶薄膜在医疗保健领域实时温度监测方面一直是一个有前景的解决方案，但尚未在临床实践中得到应用。为了在这方面取得进展，本研究的目标有两个。首先，它对由嵌入两个弹性体层之间的热致液晶阵列组成的传感元件进行了全面表征，其次，它讨论了这样一个系统与非局部红外测量相比的情况。这里评估的传感元件工作温度范围为34 - 38°C，响应时间约为0.25秒。将使用该系统获得的表面温度分布与使用红外热成像技术（一种常用于测量伤口部位温度分布的技术）获得的温度分布进行了比较。这种比较是在模拟伤口上进行的，结果表明所提出的传感元件能够重现温度分布，类似于使用红外成像获得的温度分布。尽管在将液晶传感元件应用于临床实践之前还有很长的路要走，但这项工作的结果表明，这种传感器可能适用于未来的伤口监测系统。
