With sepsis remaining a leading cause of mortality, early identification of septic patients and those at high risk of death is a challenge of high socioeconomic importance. The driving hypothesis of this study was that hyperspectral imaging (HSI) could provide novel biomarkers for sepsis diagnosis and treatment management due to its potential to monitor microcirculatory alterations. We conducted a comprehensive study involving HSI data of the palm and fingers from more than 480 patients on the day of their intensive care unit (ICU) admission. The findings demonstrate that HSI measurements can predict sepsis with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.80 (95 % confidence interval (CI) [0.76; 0.84]) and mortality with an AUROC of 0.72 (95 % CI [0.65; 0.79]). The predictive performance improves substantially when additional clinical data is incorporated, leading to an AUROC of up to 0.94 (95 % CI [0.92; 0.96]) for sepsis and 0.84 (95 % CI [0.78; 0.89]) for mortality. We conclude that HSI presents novel imaging biomarkers for the rapid, non-invasive prediction of sepsis and mortality, suggesting its potential as an important modality for guiding diagnosis and treatment.

翻译：脓毒症仍是导致死亡的主要原因，早期识别脓毒症患者及死亡高风险患者是具有重要社会经济意义的挑战。本研究的基本假设是高光谱成像（HSI）技术因其监测微循环改变的潜力，可为脓毒症诊断与治疗管理提供新型生物标志物。我们对超过480名患者入住重症监护病房（ICU）当天的掌部与手指HSI数据进行了系统性研究。结果表明：HSI测量可预测脓毒症，其受试者工作特征曲线下面积（AUROC）达0.80（95%置信区间[0.76; 0.84]）；预测死亡率的AUROC为0.72（95%置信区间[0.65; 0.79]）。当结合额外临床数据时，预测性能显著提升：脓毒症预测AUROC最高达0.94（95%置信区间[0.92; 0.96]），死亡率预测AUROC达0.84（95%置信区间[0.78; 0.89]）。我们得出结论：HSI为快速、无创预测脓毒症与死亡率提供了新型成像生物标志物，表明其有望成为指导诊断与治疗的重要技术手段。