3D Wound Tracking System Wins Best Innovation Award at Health Care Technology Conference

A new 360-degree perspective on wound care has already attracted attention from the health care industry, and Assistant Professor Salam Daher and Dahlia Musa Ph.D. ’25 from NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing have a goal to further develop a 3D graphics simulation tool to patent it for commercial use. 

Their submission to “Simventors” (short for simulation inventors) to demonstrate a "System to Visualize, Measure, and Track Simulated Wounds in 3D" recently won the Best Innovation Award at the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) 2025 in Orlando, Florida. The work is a collaboration with the University of Central Florida College of Nursing. The IMSH is a scientific conference that explores the latest innovations and best practices in health care simulation.

Daher, an expert at the intersection of computing and health care simulation, asserts that most changes occur inside a wound and are difficult to measure accurately. Health care practitioners apply different standards for evaluating wound depth and size, from rulers and cotton swabs to existing software where the measurement of a flat 2D image fails to accurately capture the topology of the wound. 

The new system uses a geodesic measurement to calculate and create a path along a 3D surface to evaluate the entire dimension of a wound and obtain a sensitive indicator of how a wound changes indicating its progress. 

For Musa, who recently completed her Ph.D. in information systems, the prospect of combining computing, graphics and healthcare was intriguing, but not something that she was initially aware could be pursued together as a graduate program. She chose NJIT for the freedom to create a personalized approach to fusing technology, visual art and a desire to improve health disparities in a manner that has a direct impact to the public beyond research.

Although her undergraduate degree in computer science allowed for an easier transition into simulation using computer graphics, health care was not something in which she had direct experience.

“The biggest challenge was writing algorithms for things I knew very little about,” she said. 

Daher and Musa agree, however, that the real thrill of their research comes from working in something they love to make a difference in society. 

“I enjoy it so much that I lose track of time!” said Daher. 

Now that she has completed her program, Musa is keeping her options open but is interested in continuing as a researcher in academia or industry. 

Daher is also engaged in further developing an earlier AR (augmented reality) simulation project to better train caretakers for older adults.