Embedded Colour- and Electrodermal-Based Pressure Injury Staging and Objective Pain Assessment System Powered by a Proton Battery

  • Wahmisari Priharti Advanced Biomedical Intelligent Engineering Laboratory, Biomedical & Healthcare Technology Center of Excellence, School of Electrical Engineering, Telkom University, Bandung, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3650-6607
  • Husneni Mukhtar Advanced Biomedical Intelligent Engineering Laboratory, Biomedical & Healthcare Technology Center of Excellence, School of Electrical Engineering, Telkom University, Bandung, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5629-3215
  • Dien Rahmawati Advanced Biomedical Intelligent Engineering Laboratory, Biomedical & Healthcare Technology Center of Excellence, School of Electrical Engineering, Telkom University, Bandung, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3983-0848
  • Nur Hidayah Ahmad Advanced Optical Materials Research Group, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia Corresponding author: W. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6717-2534
Keywords: Pressure injury, stage classification, objective pain assessment, proton battery

Abstract

Pressure injury is a serious health concern among the elderly and individuals with restricted mobility and is often associated with pain that reduces quality of life. Conventional assessment relies on clinician visual inspection and subjective pain scales, which are difficult to apply to patients with limited communication abilities. Therefore, early identification, accurate stage classification and objective pain assessment are essential for effective clinical intervention. This study develops an embedded pressure injury stage classification and pain assessment system integrating a colour sensor and an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor with a Rule-Based Decision Tree to classify pressure injuries into four clinical stages, powered by a six-cell 1.5 V proton battery pack as an alternative to conventional lithium-based power sources. The system achieved an overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.88, 0.89, 0.88, and 0.88, respectively. Skin Conductance Level (SCL) increased progressively from Stage 1 to Stage 3 and decreased at Stage 4, indicating a preliminary physiological pattern associated with injury severity. The battery pack maintained a stable output voltage of 9.1 V at an average current consumption of 279.9 mA, demonstrating its feasibility as an alternative power source. Because the thresholds were derived from 70 annotated Medetec images and validated on only two subjects with four injury sites (40 region-level measurements), the reported metrics should be interpreted as preliminary proof-of-concept rather than definitive clinical validation, and larger studies are needed for clinical confirmation.

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Published
2026-10-30
How to Cite
[1]
W. Priharti, H. Mukhtar, D. Rahmawati, and N. H. Ahmad, “Embedded Colour- and Electrodermal-Based Pressure Injury Staging and Objective Pain Assessment System Powered by a Proton Battery”, j.electron.electromedical.eng.med.inform, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 1687-1701, Oct. 2026.
Section
Electronics