A Deep Learning Image-to-Image Translation Approach for a More Accessible Estimator of the Healing Time of Burns

Objective:
An accurate and timely diagnosis of burn severity is critical to ensure a positive outcome. Laser Doppler imaging (LDI) has become a very useful tool for this task. It measures the perfusion of the burn and estimates its potential healing time. LDIs generate a 6-color palette image, with each color representing a healing time. This technique has very high costs associated. In resource-limited areas, such as low- and middle-income countries or remote locations like space, where access to specialized burn care is inadequate, more affordable and portable tools are required. This study proposes a novel image-to-image translation approach to estimate burn healing times, using a digital image to approximate the LDI.
Methods:
This approach consists of a U-net architecture with a VGG-based encoder and applies the concept of ordinal classification. Paired digital and LDI images of burns were collected. The performance was evaluated with 10-fold cross-validation, mean absolute error (MAE), and color distribution differences between the ground truth and the estimated LDI.
Results:
Results showed a satisfactory performance in terms of low MAE (
$0.2370 \pm 0.0086$
). However, the unbalanced distribution of colors in the data affects this performance.
Significance:
This novel and unique approach serves as a basis for developing more accessible support tools in the burn care environment in resource-limited areas.