Open AccessDifferentiation of burn wounds in an in vivo porcine model using terahertz spectroscopy
Author(s) -
Omar B. Osman,
Timothy Jack Tan,
S. C. Henry,
Adelaide Warsen,
Navid Farr,
Abbi M. McClintic,
Yak-Nam Wang,
Saman Arbabi,
M. Hassan Arbab
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.397792
Subject(s) - terahertz radiation , hyperspectral imaging , biomedical engineering , burn injury , materials science , in vivo , gold standard (test) , pig skin , spectroscopy , optics , pathology , medicine , optoelectronics , surgery , computer science , radiology , biology , artificial intelligence , physics , microbiology and biotechnology , quantum mechanics
The accuracy of current burn triage techniques has remained between 50-70%. Accordingly, there is a significant clinical need for the quantitative and accurate assessment of partial-thickness burn injuries. Porcine skin represents the closest animal model to human skin, and is often used in surgical skin grafting procedures. In this study, we used a standardized in vivo porcine burn model to obtain terahertz (THz) point-spectroscopy measurements from burns with various severities. We then extracted two reflection hyperspectral parameters, namely spectral area under the curve between approximately 0.1 and 0.9 THz (-10 dB bandwidth in each spectrum), and spectral slope, to characterize each burn. Using a linear combination of these two parameters, we accurately classified deep partial- and superficial partial-thickness burns ( p = 0.0159), compared to vimentin immunohistochemistry as the gold standard for burn depth determination.