Patent ID: 8060188

Claim:
A non-invasive method for predicting tissue necrosis in a tissue portion to which blood supply has been compromised, the method comprising: providing a tissue portion to which blood supply has been compromised; collecting spectroscopic images of the tissue portion at the short wavelength side of the oxyhemoglobin (HbO 2 )/deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) isobestic wavelength and the long wavelength side of the oxyhemoglobin (HbO 2 )/deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) isobestic wavelength, said images comprising pixels having both spatial and spectral information; pre-processing the pixels of the spectroscopic images by applying a processing technique selected from the group consisting of: contrast enhancement, log residual correction, median filtering, statistical scaling and inverse contrast ratio; grouping together the pre-processed pixels of the spectroscopic images according to similar spectral reflectance responses by a classification method selected from the group consisting of principal component analysis, unsupervised cluster analysis, supervised cluster analysis and fuzzy C-means cluster analysis, thereby producing a tissue reflectance image in which regional variations in tissue reflectance are mapped; and calculating oxygen saturation index at individual pixels of the spectroscopic images by determining the relative ratio of HbO 2 and Hb concentrations using said spectral and spatial information, thereby producing an oxygen saturation image in which regional variations in oxygen saturation of the tissue portion are mapped; wherein the grouped pixels in the tissue reflectance image and the oxygen saturation image identify regions of the tissue portion below a certain oxygen saturation threshold which will become necrotic without corrective measures and regions of the tissue portion above a certain oxygen saturation index threshold which will remain viable.