Why Burn Care Lacks Diagnostic Tools

Introduction — The Diagnostic Gap in Burn Care

Burn injuries affect millions globally. Roughly 11 million people require medical care for burns each year, and about 180,000 die, mostly in low- and middle-income countries (MDPI, 2024).
In the U.S. alone, approximately 398,000 burn-related injuries occur annually, with 29,000 hospital admissions (American Burn Association, 2023).
Yet despite this burden, burn care lacks standardised diagnostic tools.
Clinicians still depend largely on visual inspection—a process with 60–75% accuracy, even among experienced surgeons (The International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds, 2020).

Key message: Burn care remains one of the few major wound care areas without a reliable, objective diagnostic device.

Determining burn depth guides critical treatment choices—whether to excise, graft, or allow natural healing.
Misdiagnosis leads to overtreatment (unnecessary surgeries) or undertreatment (infection, scarring, delayed healing).
Studies show that clinical assessment accuracy drops to as low as 50%–71% between days 2–5 post-injury (MDPI, 2023).
These diagnostic inconsistencies translate to longer hospital stays, higher costs, and suboptimal outcomes (ScienceDirect, 2021).

The DFU field has adopted thermal, fluorescence, and hyperspectral imaging technologies that provide quantitative perfusion and oxygenation data.
Such tools support objective, repeatable wound monitoring, improving early detection of infection and healing trajectories.

Technologies like near-infrared spectroscopy and 3D imaging offer clinicians measurable parameters of tissue viability.
These methods help standardise assessments and support evidence-based interventions across clinical teams.

In contrast, burn diagnosis still depends on subjective interpretation of color, texture, and blanching, which varies between clinicians.
Compared with 95% accuracy achieved by imaging in chronic wound care, burn assessment’s 60–70% range highlights a major technology gap.

Complex burn pathology: Mixed-depth burns are inherently difficult to evaluate visually.
Lack of accessible imaging tools: Existing options (e.g., Laser Doppler Imaging) are accurate—up to 95% when used days 2–5 post-burn—but remain costly, slow, and workflow-intensive (MDPI, 2023).
Limited clinical integration: Even when imaging tools are introduced, adoption rates hover around 70–80% due to workflow challenges (MDPI, 2023).
Regulatory and reimbursement hurdles also slow adoption of burn-specific diagnostic devices.

Non-contact imaging reduces infection risk and improves patient comfort.
Quantitative visualisation enables consistent inter-clinician assessments and supports data-driven care.
Clinicians can identify surgical candidates earlier, improving outcomes and reducing resource use.

MSI captures reflected light across multiple wavelengths, visualising oxygenation and tissue viability beneath the wound surface.
It provides richer data than standard photography, revealing perfusion changes invisible to the human eye.

AI models can process spectral data to predict healing potential within minutes, empowering clinicians with real-time decision support.
One study reported an AI-enhanced multispectral imaging system achieving 95.3% accuracy in burn depth prediction, with sensitivity of 80.7% and specificity of 95.5% (Journal of Burn Care & Research, 2024).

Spectral AI’s DeepView AI ® system combines DeepView SnapShot® hardware (for real-time, non-invasive imaging) with DeepView AI® software (for predictive analysis).
The system provides data-driven insights on tissue viability and expected healing trajectory—within minutes, not days.
Supported by multiple clinical studies and FDA designations, DeepView® is pioneering objective, AI-powered diagnostics in burn care.

As imaging and AI technologies mature, burn assessment is shifting from subjective observation to measurable precision.
Spectral AI is positioned at the forefront of this transformation, delivering objective diagnostics that improve outcomes, consistency, and confidence in burn care