Lord of the Rings technology to help map wounds

Fascinating technology to measure the depth of a wound...and appears to be another use for PDAs/Phones ....BD

The SilhouetteMobile hand-held device uses lasers and state-of-the- art digital photography to create three-dimensional maps. One of its first uses was with Weta Workshop, which scanned wax sculptures of animated characters for the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings movies so they could be manipulated on computer. The device, made by ARANZ Medical, is one of the finalists in the annual Health Innovation Awards, along with four other initiatives by the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB). ARANZ Medical chief executive Bruce Davey said the device was being used to map the changing nature of serious wounds. It calculated the wound area and depth, and stored all information on its palm-sized computer, Davey said.

The device had just won Food and Drug Administration approval, which meant access to the potentially multimillion-dollar United States market, he said.