Human Body Parts Tracking from Pressure Data: Toward Effective Pressure Injury Assessment

Pressure injuries (PI) cause significant co-morbidities to patients and are costly to the healthcare system, yet mostly preventable. The development of PI is multi-factorial and a major factor is the prolonged interface pressure between the body and the support surface. Monitoring interface pressure over time can reduce the risk of PI development, especially for high risk groups such as those with mobility issues, including seniors and patients with spinal cord injuries. PI can be monitored using pressure sensors. However, the current procedure relies on nurses checking the visualization screens periodically for snapshot pressure assessments, without longitudinal measurements and predictive analysis. We proposed a novel method to track target body parts from pressure data over time. The goal is to develop an automatic PI monitoring system, which will provide just-in-time alerts to care-givers and release nursing resources to higher priority tasks.