Multispectral shortwave infrared (SWIR) for equitable assessment of bruising in darkly pigmented skin (Conference Presentation)

Domestic Violence (DV) is a public health crisis. There is growing evidence that the more subtle visual appearance of bruises in DV survivors with darkly pigmented skin (DPS) creates barriers for life-saving help-seeking behavior. Bruises consist of extravasated blood and water within the dermis below the melanin-containing epidermal basal layer, and the overlapping absorption spectra of blood and melanin in the visible range results in bruises having a more subtle visual appearance in DPS. In contrast, because the short-wave infrared range is sensitive to water and insensitive to melanin, we hypothesized that SWIR-imaging could enable equitable bruise assessment that overcomes the limitations of visible photography. To this end, induced and imaged bruises in a swine breed with mosaic pigmentation and found that SWIR image was able to visualize bruises with high contrast in DPS, thereby overcoming longstanding limitations of visible photography with respect to bruise documentation.