Treating burn patients is a challenging task, but now doctors could soon have an artificial intelligence-based solution to help them decide if a burn patient has to undergo surgery to avoid permanent scarring on the skin.
Now skin burns can be diagnosed with more accuracy
The AI system called DeepView uses a camera that is specially designed for the job and is attached to a computer with AI software that can accurately identify permanently damaged skin with 90% accuracy.
DeepView is a product of Spectral AI, which is a Dallas-based AI company. It also focuses on other types of wounds, but its primary focus is burns and diabetic foot ulcers, for which it is utilizing its DeepView product.
While, according to research studies, surgeons typically assess only 50 percent of cases with accuracy for the extent of burns,.
The system takes only a few seconds to identify if burns are of such severity that the patient would need skin grafts. This is quite a difference compared to the current procedures, which can take up to two days to identify the same thing for doctors.
Currently, doctors usually have to rely on scans from hospital scanning machines to make assumptions about healthy and damaged cells. Due to patient load, getting access is also time-consuming.
Researchers at Spectral AI developed the technology by training the machine on thousands of burn images of different types so that the AI system could be taught to differentiate between and evaluate the potential severity of a burn.
DeepView AI system for diagnosis
Spectral AI’s UK subsidiary executive vice president, Prof. Paul Chadwick, said that the current observation practices, which are expensive and time-consuming and also have a greater infection risk due to open wounds, are outdated.
He also noted that it also burdens the healthcare system along with the patient as it requires a longer hospitalization time. The DeepView system has the ability to cut down on these observation periods and will speed up the process of managing burn wounds in the country.
Prof. Chadwick is an experienced professional in wound management; mentioning the DeepView system, he said,
“Coming from a traditional wound care background with an emphasis on DFU and other chronic wounds and having collaborated with leading commercial organizations in wound care, I am delighted to contribute to Spectral AI’s mission and success, and I believe that the DeepView System represents the future of wound healing management.”
Source: Spectral AI.
According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 250,000 people in the UK receive burn injuries each year. Around 175,000 patients only attend emergency departments at hospitals, but nearly 16,000 patients are hospitalized for observation and special treatments if required.
Nearly one thousand patients are diagnosed with severe skin damage that requires a skin graft procedure in which a skin patch is removed from one body area and transplanted onto the open wound.
The procedure is traditionally done after observation and diagnosis by surgeons if they feel that the skin cells will not recover on their own, but now, DeepView’s technology could help them speed up the process.