A novel approach for quantification of contour irregularities of diabetic foot ulcers and its association with ischemic heart disease

Diabetic Foot Ulcer (DFU) is a common and global health problem in patients suffering from Diabetes. Delayed healing of these ulcers lead to serious problems, such as infection and amputation, apart from the problems faced in carrying out daily activities. This work has hypothesized the change in irregularity of wound contour may be linked to patient's clinical conditions. So far, fractal dimension is known to describe the change in irregularity of the fractal objects with change in scale but it fails to show any relation with the medical conditions in case of DFUs. This work introduces a new approach to quantify the irregularity of the wound contour and studies its association with some medical conditions. It was found that the change in irregularity of the wound contour from week 1 to week 4 had a close relation with ischemic heart disease as an important factor affecting the healing of DFUs.