Significance: Peripheral pitting edema is a clinician-administered measure for grading edema. Peripheral edema is graded 0, 1  +  , 2  +  , 3  +  , or 4  +  , but subjectivity is a major limitation of this technique. A pilot clinical study for short-wave infrared (SWIR) molecular chemical imaging (MCI) effectiveness as an objective, non-contact quantitative peripheral edema measure is underway.

Aim: We explore if SWIR MCI can differentiate populations with and without peripheral edema. Further, we evaluate the technology for correctly stratifying subjects with peripheral edema.

Approach: SWIR MCI of shins from healthy subjects and heart failure (HF) patients was performed. Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to discriminate the two populations. PLS regression (PLSR) was applied to assess the ability of MCI to grade edema.

Results: Average spectra from edema exhibited higher water absorption than non-edema spectra. SWIR MCI differentiated healthy volunteers from a population representing all pitting edema grades with 97.1% accuracy (N  =  103 shins). Additionally, SWIR MCI correctly classified shin pitting edema levels in patients with 81.6% accuracy.

Conclusions: Our study successfully achieved the two primary endpoints. Application of SWIR MCI to monitor patients while actively receiving HF treatment is necessary to validate SWIR MCI as an HF monitoring technology.